Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
The story is that in the 1975 draft, Cliff Fletcher intended to take Kent Nilsson with a late pick. But Swedes were hardly scouted in those days, and he somehow got the name mixed up with another player. In the 12th round (!) he drafted ‘Torbjorn Nilsson’. Every hockey club in Sweden, it's been said, went frantically searching for any player with that name, to see if they could get the transfer fee.
Needless to say, no ‘Torbjorn Nilsson’ was ever found, and the following year Fletcher drafted Kent Nilsson in the 4th.
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It's possible that Cliff thought they were drafting Kent at the time, but the rest of that story sounds like something someone made up along the way.
There was a Swedish player named Torbjorn Nilsson. He was also drafted by Winnipeg in the WHA draft that year:
https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/....php?pid=47605
He played in the same league as Kent that season, but on a different team. His stats were nothing spectacular, but neither were anyone's who was getting picked in the 12th round in 1975. In fact, at that point in the draft, a lot of teams just didn't bother using their picks anymore.
Kent wasn't even eligible for the 1975 draft. He was only 19 and the draft age was still 20 at the time. If there was a name mix-up that's the likely cause. Someone probably said "what about that Nilsson kid in Sweden?" and they looked up the list of eligible players and didn't see Kent's name, but did see Torbjorn and assumed it must be the same kid using two different names.