Stephen Halliday is slated to make his NHL debut Thursday night for the Ottawa Senators, according to a report from the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch. Halliday’s is a story about the value of patience, sticking with it and how development is not always linear.
Halliday’s story is also one about expectations, perceptions and how those can change over time.
Consider the fact that he was a No. 1 pick in the USHL Futures Draft in 2018, made an early commitment to the University of North Dakota and was largely considered a high-end NHL prospect at a young age as a skilled center with size.
After being passed over in two NHL Drafts amid three middling USHL seasons, it had at least seemed that Halliday’s very early projection was inaccurate.
Maybe it was at the outset, and for a lot of players that could be the end of the story. That was not the case for Halliday.
After playing his first year in the USHL for a team that no longer exists – the Central Illinois Flying Aces – Halliday played in three more USHL campaigns with the Dubuque Fighting Saints. Most NHL prospects do not spend four years in junior. Often whatever school they’ve committed to will pull them out, but North Dakota didn’t think Halliday was ready to come in and they were right.
Not going to school on schedule probably ended up being the best thing that could have happened to Halliday. A year when many would be struggling through their freshman season, Halliday surged in the USHL with Dubuque.
In his final junior season, everything clicked. His career high prior to that season was 48 points. In the 2021-22 season with Dubuque Halliday had a staggering 95 points including 35 goals and 60 assists. He became Dubuque’s all-time leading scorer.
The Ottawa Senators picked him in the fourth round in his third and final year of NHL Draft eligibility. Halliday had already decommitted from North Dakota and signed with Ohio State. After two highly successful collegiate seasons, he signed with Ottawa and was assigned to the AHL’s Belleville Senators.
In 96 career games with Belleville, Halliday has 72 points. He is averaging better than a point per game with the B-Sens and now is getting his first crack at the NHL.
Halliday is an excellent lesson is that early perceptions and expectations don’t always have to be met on schedule. There are plenty of players who had all the accolades he had coming into junior hockey, didn’t live up to them and never made it.
It would have been easy for Halliday to go through three years of average (at best) production and fade into the background. It is a huge credit to him for sticking with the process, letting development and his own hard work take its course.
Stories like his are a bit rarer. Players get misevaluated all the time at the ages of 15 and 16 when there is still so much runway left that can go either way. Sometimes they get overhyped unnecessarily, other times they may have been evaluated properly but the long-term projection took a lot longer to come around.
What crystalizes this even further is that we can look at Halliday and say, “Wow, it took him a bit longer to get going!” Well, he’s still only 23 with plenty of development runway left.
It’s a good reminder that development does not move in a straight line and that the peaks and valleys are all part of it for every player. Some valleys will be deeper than others, but the ones that find their way perhaps deserve even more credit when they accomplish their ultimate goal.
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