My Draft Day: Peter Worrell

Peter Worrell had never thought about being a Florida Panther prior to the 1995 NHL Draft.
Yet just a little over 25 years later, he couldn't imagine spending his career anywhere else.

"I was surprised that was the team that drafted me, but in all honesty I was pumped," Worrell said. "I was really excited. It was the early days of the organization, so it created something in my mind that if I worked hard and kept improving that there's an opportunity for me to make the lineup one day. I didn't think it was going to happen as quickly as it did, but it was a great ride."
Taken by the Panthers in the seventh round (166th overall) in the draft, Worrell went on to suit up in 342 regular season games for Florida (1997-98 to 2002-03), registering 16 goals and 26 assists. A feared enforcer on the ice, he also accumulated a whopping 1,375 penalty minutes.
Known by fans as "Big Pete" -- a well-deserved nickname given his 6-foot-6, 230-pound frame -- Worrell competed in a combined 488 regular-season games between the NHL, AHL and ECHL.
But after retiring from professional hockey in 2006, the Pierrefonds, Quebec native returned to South Florida to begin the next stage of his career as a youth hockey coach, spending time at both Florida Atlantic University and North Broward Preparatory School before eventually being hired by the Panthers in 2019 to serve as the team's hockey director at the Panthers IceDen.
With the all-digital 2020 NHL Draft set to get underway on Oct. 6-7, Worrell recently sat down with FloridaPanthers.com's Jameson Olive to discuss his experience at the draft, a moment in his life that inevitably sent him down a very long and exciting career path with the Panthers.

OLIVE: What sort of expectations did you have heading into the 1995 NHL Draft?
WORELL: Well, I had some conversations with a few teams. I think I was kind of on the fence. I think I was rated to go in the fifth round, but that was if you took out goalies and Europeans. I was hoping to get drafted, but I wasn't 100% positive that it was actually going to happen.
OLIVE: With that in mind, was there any stress hanging over your head about the draft as you played through the 1994-95 season with the Hull Olympiques in the QMJHL?
WORRELL:Yes and no. It's stressful for that day of the draft, but in the grand scheme of things I was just excited to be in the QMJHL at that point. It was my first year having played very much. I was more worried and focus on that. I had a belief that if it didn't happen on that day, it would happen down the road.
OLIVE: As a young kid, how important was it to just play and not get weighed down by that stress?
WORRELL:I think every kid that plays dreams to play in the NHL. If you're not, I don't know why you're playing [laughs]. My goal, year to year, was just to make the next team. I tried not to ever really look forward, in that aspect. Again, I was really proud to be a part of the Hull Olympiques. We were defending our league championship that year, hoping that we could improve and go further.
OLIVE: Once the draft finally did arrive, how did you spend that day?
WORRELL: It was a little different [laughs]. Again, as somebody who wasn't sure that he was going to get drafted… Being in Montreal, a flight to Edmonton to sit in the stands and just cheer everybody else didn't seem very tempting. Myself and about seven teammates that I grew up with that were playing [in the QMJHL] and were all draft-eligible that year just got together and went to a Mexican restaurant. We watched the draft hoping to hear our names. A few of us heard it; a few of us didn't. We had a really good friend of ours who was rated in the top-10 who had promised us that he was going to stick around the whole draft and if he heard our names he was going to give us a phone call, which he didn't do [laughs].

OLIVE: So what happened next?
WORRELL: I watched the first three rounds, I think, that they played on TV back then. I didn't hear my name. Some of us were a little disappointed, a little sad. I went home, went to sleep and woke up the next day to my dad yelling and screaming that I'd been drafted. It just didn't register, so I went back to sleep *laughs*]. When I woke up a couple hours later, read the newspaper and saw my name, I proceeded to go a little bit crazy.
**OLIVE: When did you finally get in touch with the Panthers after that?**
**WORRELL:**Well, it was a couple hours later I finally got my phone call with the Panthers. I guess they somehow got the wrong phone number [*laughs*]. They'd been calling some little old lady for hours and hours until it got to the point where she started cussing them out. When we finally got the call, I think it was Terry Murray that called me and welcomed me to the organization. It was Terry and Chuck Fletcher, actually. It started a long love affair.
**OLIVE: Did you have any conversations with the Panthers before the draft?**
**WORRELL:** No. No. I did interviews with quite a few a teams, but the Panthers weren't one of them. I found out afterwards that the Murray family -- Bryan was our GM at the time and Tim was one of our scouts -- that Tim was the one that pounded the table for me. They're from Shawville, Quebec, which was just around the corner from where I played. He had watched me multiple times and really believed in me and what I could do. He wanted to keep that quiet and hope that he could snatch me in the later rounds, which he was able to do.
**OLIVE: The Panthers had only been in the NHL for two seasons at that point. As a kid from Quebec, what was it like when you realized you'd be playing hockey in Florida?**
**WORRELL:**It was a place where I think, in my mindset, if I did well I could create something and be a part of the foundation of something. That seemed pretty cool. Obviously, growing up in Montreal and being in Canada you're around a traditional organization. As a kid I would have loved to play for the Montreal Canadiens. That love affair for the Canadiens died when they passed me up about eight times during the draft though [*laughs*]. You see that growing up and that's really cool, but you almost feel like you're a cog in the machine. But going to Florida at that time, you felt like you could really make your mark, leave a stamp on the organization, and try and create an atmosphere for how the organization is supposed to go. To me, I've always been intrigued by that. I don't like being a follower. I like to find different paths.
**OLIVE: What do you remember about your first trip to Florida following the draft?**
**WORRELL:** I was down there a couple weeks after the draft for camp. I got picked up by a couple of the trainers, Scott Tinkler and Tim LeRoy. I flew in wearing my Florida State hat, which immediately got me yelled at because the two of them were Miami grads [*laughs*]. That started a 25-year war between the three of us. I remember getting off the plane the first thing that hit me was the humidity. It was like, "Wow! This is different." Just seeing how the structure of how hockey was in Florida compared to Montreal was just different. Like I said, it was exciting. It was fun. I got to meet some of the younger guys that were in the organization at the same time. We were all in the same boat. The Eddie Jovanovskis, the Kevin Weekes, the Radek Dvoraks, the Rhett Warreners, the guys that were ready to start making their marks in the league. That first camp, I think we were staying at the Embassy Suites in Deerfield Beach. It was a great time. I was 18 years old and embarking on a dream.
**OLIVE: How much have the Panthers meant to you throughout your career?**
**WORRELL:**Pretty much everything. Obviously, they were the organization that gave me an opportunity. For that, I've always been grateful. The people that were here when I first started were people that really believed in me. It wasn't just 'Let's take a chance on this kid.' From Mr. Torrey to Bryan Murray to Mr. Huizenga, any time we ever saw each other they gave me so much confidence. They were so welcoming to me and really talked to me in a way where it wasn't just welcoming me to the program. They really looked at me as someone that was going to be a part of their future. It really meant a lot to me. It made we want to give everything I could to this organization. Of course, it wasn't a lifetime thing. I got traded away. That's part of the business. But I love the area. It's where I grew up as a man. When I was done playing, it was where I wanted to stay. When I retired, I got into coaching down here. I just wanted to try and give back to the game, give back to the area and give back to the program. It's nice to have it be coming back in a little bit of a full circle. Hopefully, there's a lot more giving that I can do.
**OLIVE: As someone that's not only been through the draft process but is now also molding young hockey players, what advice would you give to Florida's upcoming draft class?**
**WORRELL:** It's fairly simple: be humble, work hard and don't take anything for granted. You're here for a reason. Obviously, as an organization we believe in you and believe in what you can do, so you should go on the ice and feel that same way. Listen to what your coaches say and what some of the vets are trying to tell you, both big things and little things, whether it's things about hockey or things about life. I think the great thing about hockey is that we generally try to help each other. Allow yourself to be taught. It might not happen in Year 1, it might not happen in Year 5, but if you follow those tenets you're going to get an opportunity and eventually get a chance to make your case if you're a good enough player or not.
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[FloridaPanthers.com/DraftCentral
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