Claude Giroux -- Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus.

Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus.

How worth it would a video be of Flyers' legend Bobby Clarke fumbling the name of Claude Giroux as the 18-year-old Hearst, Ontario native and QMJHL star who, despite being undrafted in his home league of the OHL, had his named "called" at the 2006 NHL Entry Draft?

Unfortunately, as far as I know, no video exists in the archives readily accessible to your average non-NHL personnel. (For those of you who are lost, that means that YouTube does not have a copy.)


Some of you must be questioning about now just how this little dynamo forward from Ontario managed to get skipped over by the OHL, signed by the QMJHL, and then skipped over 21 times at the NHL Draft?




Well, I cannot speak for the NHL.

He was 22nd taken in a class that shot out Erik Johnson, Jordan Staal, Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom, and Phil Kessel in the top five. While you could throw Claude Giroux fairly comfortably into that group at this point in time, you can at least see why a guy like Giroux could get passed so readily. Some other good players dot the range from six to twenty-one as well.

That does not mean that Giroux is somehow the lesser of his draft class though, and he's certainly throwing his name into the hat with the best of them.

This only solves one question though. Where did Giroux come from?

To put it bluntly, right here:

Hearst, Ontario may look close to U.S. border on a miniature map of Canada, but in reality, it is 344 miles (roughly 7 1/2 hours) from Sault Ste. Marie and 338 miles (again roughly 7 1/2 hours) from Sudbury. The hockey fans in the audience may know them as the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and the Sudbury Wolves, the two closest OHL teams to Giroux as he was growing up in a town of just under 6,000.

Needless to say, there is a good reason that Giroux went relatively unnoticed until he started making waves for the Gatineau Olympiques located just 593 miles and 12 3/4 hours away from Hearst.

Brave the bitter cold of the north?

Believe it or not, Hearst is even north for hockey.

Giroux going under the radar is all very understandable at this point, but how about when he managed to drop 51 points in just 19 QMJHL playoff games just 24 years after the great Mario Lemieux managed 52 points in 14 postseason games?

Clearly Giroux's numbers as a 19-year-old still don't match Lemieux's as a 17-year-old, but the point should hit home nonetheless.

It didn't.

So there the Flyers sat, with a gifted young forward, who most outside the Flyers' fanbase thought was just another good forward with some nice passing ability.

But soon things changed, as things tend to do, when the whole hockey world got to see Giroux on the biggest stage in the hockey world, the Stanley Cup Playoffs. 21 points in 23 games later and he's about as much of a household name as an NHLer can be without getting shoved down our throats like some pop band looking for the kind of money associated with teenage girls. Let's face it. The league is in it to market big names, not little firecrackers from the North Pole.

I'm sure there are those that threw Giroux into the "overrated" column before. I know. I've seen them. It must have been hard for those who watched him only play against their teams, on the brink of domination on some nights, while never putting up significant numbers to give credit to someone who no one had really ever heard of.

To those people, it's nice to know what 5 more minutes of ice time a night can do. We are 13 games into the 2010-11 season, and Giroux has 14 points to lead the Flyers. He is no longer a complimentary forward or an overrated passer as some have claimed. Now he's among Richards and Carter as the leaders of this team. Throw them in with Briere, Leino, Hartnell, vanRiemsdyk and others, and there is no reason to suspect that the Flyers' offense will be slowing down any time soon. If it comes down to that, Giroux will be there to pick it right back up again. After all, if you want someone out of a slump in a hurry, all you need to do is put him on a line with the little kid from Hearst, Ontario.

MAGIC

Yes...

Yes, Virginia.

There is a Santa Claus.

And magic still exists for those who believe.

And there are those among us who can see everything and everyone without even looking...They just know.

Claude Giroux the Omnipotent.

The Wizard of Orange promises you at least one unforgettable experience every time you tune in for two and a half hours of incredible hockey action, and only the other colors leave disappointed. How is that for a present?