If you polled casual hockey fans about which NHL club would be most likely to draft Minnesota natives, a few teams could come to mind - the nearest NHL rival, the Chicago Blackhawks, the home state Minnesota Wild, or possibly the Flyers or Bruins, where Minnesotans Paul Holmgren and Jamie Langenbrunner hold managerial roles. 

True, the Blackhawks are one of two teams to have drafted five Minnesotans over the last six NHL Entry Drafts. However, the other franchise that's made it a priority to discover and dissect Minnesotans lies nearly 1,600 miles to the southwest, its arena nestled between a convention center and the Florida Aquarium. 

Since 2022, Tampa Bay Lightning management has drafted players from a variety of backgrounds and locations in Minnesota, spanning the state from Warroad to Minnetonka. If you count Isaac Howard, a Hudson, Wis. native who played the vast majority of his hockey for Minnesota-based teams, the number of Lightning picks from Minnesota rises to six. That would make Tampa Bay the NHL's undisputed leader in drafting talent from Minnesota.

The Minnesota-born players selected by the Lightning include Connor Kurth (2022), Jayson Shaugabay and Jack Harvey (2023), Hagen Burrows (2024), and Caleb Heil (2025). The lot includes four forwards and one goaltender. 

Why only go as far back as 2020? The average tenure of an NHL General Manager is 5.5 years, six if you round up, and there have been six drafts since 2020. The Lightning are an outlier with GM Julien BriseBois, one of a small handful of current GMs who have been with the same franchise since 2018. 

So what makes Tampa Bay the hot spot for Minnesota draftees? Is there a Moneyball-esque formula the Lightning have concocted that makes it impossible to ignore a Minnesotan once the clock starts on the fourth round? 

Unfortunately for the tinfoil-hat crowd, no. At least, nothing quantifiable by numbers, according to Tampa Bay's Director of Amateur Scouting, John Rosso. 

"It really comes down to how the list gets put together," Rosso said recently over coffee near his Eden Prairie home. "I'm sure it helps with Josh here, and Josh does a really good job." 

Josh would be Josh Dye, a former scout with the Western Hockey League's Portland Winterhawks before joining the Lightning in the same role. 

"I try to tell him to go to fewer games, and he just can't help himself," Rosso says with a chuckle. "He gets all the info. He knows the players, knows the agents. Everyone likes Josh. It makes it easier when you have the complete information on a player."

Not exactly the Bill James equation that turned the baseball management world into a walks-obsessed cabal. Just good, old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground intelligence gathering and inherent trust in those doing the gathering. 

"Familiarity and trust with your scouts is a huge deal," Rosso said. "I didn't understand that at first, but I figured it out real quick. I think that's one of the benefits of our staff. The majority of our staff have been together for more than a decade." 

That includes Rosso, who joined the Lightning as an amateur scout in 2011 after a post-playing run that included coaching or scouting stops at his alma mater, Nebraska-Omaha, the NAHL's Alexandria Blizzard, the WHL's Portland WinterHawks, and Mercyhurst. After arriving in the Sunshine State, Rosso was spoiled by more than just the sun and the sand in his first draft with the franchise.

"The majority of the amateur (scouting) staff got turned over, so I came in with ten other guys, and we all got hired before the draft, and the work was already done by the previous staff," Rosso recalled. "So we just kind of sat there and watched, which is funny because the 2011 draft was a pretty good draft for Tampa Bay." 

Franchise stalwarts and key Stanley Cup contributors Vladislav Namestnikov (27th overall), Nikita Kucherov (58th overall), and Ondrej Palat (208th overall) were all products of that 2011 draft. All three have played in more than 780 NHL games. For reference, the number of players selected 27th overall who appear in more than 750 NHL games is 12.7%. Naturally, that percentage falls precipitously as the picks get later. Only 8.1% of second-rounders reach 750 games, and that number tumbles to 0.6% of seventh-rounders. 

"After year one or year two, I was like 'oh, you can draft (a player) in the seventh round, he can go right into the American (Hockey) League, and he's a prospect,'" Rosso joked. "I was like, this is how it works. This is easy. I can do this."

Rosso quickly learned that single drafts that yield three players within striking distance of 1,000 career games are rare. But it also gave him an appreciation for late picks, which is a bonus because the Lightning don't pick high very often. Considering that drafted players aren't typically expected to join the Lightning right away, Rosso has also become accustomed to watching a player's trajectory without the anxiety that plagues teams that desperately need fresh blood in the lineup year after year. 

One of the first examples that comes to Rosso's mind is Nick Perbix, the former Elk River standout defenseman who the Lightning drafted in the sixth round in 2017, his senior season with the Elks, then patiently waited while Perbix played a season with Omaha in the USHL, then four seasons with St. Cloud State. Since playing a dozen games with Tampa Bay's AHL affiliate in Syracuse, Perbix has logged 233 NHL games and signed a two-year, $5.5 million contract with Nashville this offseason. 

Rosso explains that Perbix is a prime example of patient development, noting that the Lightning picked him on his second time through the draft, then waited five seasons before inserting him into the big club's lineup. Including the first few games of Perbix's Tampa Bay scouted during the fall of his senior year, the Lightning waited six years after identifying Perbix as a player they wanted before he earned a sweater.

"Everyone wants (development) to go on a straight incline, and it doesn't. It goes up and down, it goes backwards and forwards. There's a learning curve; it takes time to adjust. You learn how to train, you learn how to handle yourself off the ice."

Eligible to be drafted in 2016 after this junior year at Elk River, Perbix went unselected. 211 times, NHL teams decided he wasn't worth a pick. It's nothing personal - that's the nature of the business as players advance through the sport. 

Tampa Bay's first inclination that the defense-first defenseman could help the organization came during his play in the Upper Midwest High School Elite League in the fall of 2016. The league, which has existed for 20 years, still provides one of the continent's premier viewing opportunities for NHL scouts. 

A more recent example than Perbix of the Elite League's reach is Jayson Shaugabay, the former Warroad star, 2023 Mr. Hockey winner, and current Minnesota Duluth Bulldog. Rosso's Lightning selected Shaugabay in the fourth round of the 2023 draft. 

Rosso says Shaugabay was a known commodity early on because of his eye-popping point totals at the high school level - he finished with 114 career goals and 304 points in four seasons with the Warroad varsity - but the real scouting was done on those weekends at the New Hope Ice Arena. 

"For a scout, it's way better," Rosso said of the league's structure and talent level as a gauge for truly draft-worthy players. "Instead of seeing the kid from Warroad or International Falls once, or twice if they make the state tournament, you can see them every other weekend, and you don't even have to drive that far," Rosso continued, while also adding that a one-off trip to the Northwest Angle isn't the most efficient scouting trip.

"It's way more exposure, and that's part of kids getting drafted out of Minnesota," Rosso also said of the Elite League. "There are so many scouts based out of the Twin Cities metro area, it's easy for them." 

So, what can we learn after 1,400 words? 

For those people in our lives who see things only as black-and-white with no room for the ever-present grey, we've learned frustratingly little.

Like most aspects of hockey, there is no singular answer. For Minnesota, it's a happy confluence of factors that lead teams like Tampa Bay and Chicago to consistently decide that Minnesotans are worth betting on.  

We've learned that Tampa Bay doesn't enter a draft with the Minnesota mandate, but the factors that make the Lightning the betting favorite to select a player from the state include a critical component in the area scout, Josh Dye. 

We've learned that management's level of trust in Dye makes it easy to feel comfortable drafting players based on his intel. 

We've learned that the convenience of the Elite League schedule and its proximity to an abundance of NHL scouts in the Twin Cities play a key role in the Lightning's and the NHL's ability to scout the state's talent thoroughly. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we've learned that nothing in hockey is linear, most of all the line from preps to pros.