BUFFALO -- The scouting team for the Chicago Blackhawks has had the best of both worlds during the 2015 NHL Scouting Combine.

Blackhawks senior director of amateur scouting Mark Kelley and his staff not only are enjoying their time here during the interviewing phase of the Combine, but watching their diligence from previous years pay off during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

"This year has been special," Kelley said Friday. "In addition to trying to target players for the Chicago Blackhawks down the road, it's been nice to get a little bit of the reward by watching the Stanley Cup Final [against the Tampa Bay Lightning] and seeing all that hard work pay off."

One such treasure has been rookie right wing Teuvo Teravainen, who has blossomed since being placed on a line with center Antoine Vermette and left wing Patrick Sharp. The 20-year-old scored the game-tying goal in the third period and assisted on Vermette's game-winner two minutes later in the Blackhawks' 2-1 victory against the Lightning in Game 1 on Wednesday. Game 2 of this best-of-7 series will be played in Tampa on Saturday (7:15 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, TVA Sports).

Teravainen has three goals and eight points in 13 playoff games.

The Blackhawks had the 18th pick of the 2012 NHL Draft, and figured from what they saw there was little chance Teravainen would be available at their spot.

"We watched Teuvo extensively throughout his draft year," Kelley said. "Everything you see now, we saw it then. On draft day all the mock drafts we did as a group, we had Teuvo going very high. We had done our due diligence with him, interviewed him, got to know him. But we thought he would be gone a long time before our pick was up."

As Teravainen continued to drop, Kelley said the Blackhawks got happier.

"When the No. 12 pick was up, [general manager] Stan Bowman started talking to me about the pick and then we stopped talking because it was almost like … getting Teravainen was like pitching a hockey shutout. I remember him being on the board a few picks before us and Stan started receiving phone calls for the pick. He was politely declining."

The Blackhawks do not have a pick in the first round of the 2015 NHL Draft but do have picks in the second and third rounds. Kelley considers this year's draft class a deep one.

"I think there's a lot of character in the draft with the quality of the player and quality of the person," Kelley said. "I think that this draft is probably defined by the forward skill at the top. But after you get by [Connor] McDavid and [Jack] Eichel it's like any draft. It's well-rounded from forward to defense to goaltending. 

"There's so much focus on the top two that sometimes the stage is a little bit dimmer on the rest of the draft class but if you took out the top two players [McDavid and Eichel], you're still looking at a great draft with a lot of depth."

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