NHL Draft: Worst 1st round draft pick in franchise history: Boston Bruins, Alex Campbell 1964 NHL Draft
There’s a clear difference between the NHL Entry Draft and the NHL Amateur Draft. There are a lot of busts in the amateur draft of the early years in the process. Call it scouting processes in the mid-20th century or call it just how the process worked back then. However, when the Bruins have a record as they do in the draft, it is hard to not go back as far as Alex Campbell when they had the second-overall picks.
Alex Campbell came out of the Strathroy Midgets. He went on to play for St. Lawrence University, and he was eventually named captain. He eventually went to play professionally in the IHL for the Muskegon Mohawks, but he never played an NHL game. In fact, after one year in the IHL, he was done with hockey entirely.
The Bruins have some other major misses in drafts that we can talk about. Taking three picks in the 2015 NHL Draft with Mathew Barzal on the board and still letting him go to the Islanders is egregious. That’s especially bad when the three players are Jake Debrusk, Jakub Zboril, and Zachary Senyshyn. That could easily already be considered one of the worst drafts ever by a franchise, but we have to give them the benefit of the doubt since those players are still with the franchise. Campbell just never played professional hockey and the Bruins could have had Ken Dryden.