"They were asking me tough questions, one team was, and I kept saying, 'I don't know,'" said Gardiner, an incoming University of Wisconsin recruit and a projected first-round NHL draft pick. "And the scout was like, 'Well, you seem not to know about much. Are you dumb? Are you stupid or what's going on here?'"

Gardiner doesn't remember exactly what he said in response, but he remembers getting in the scout's face and cataloguing it as another moment of grilling in the leadup to the NHL draft.

Teams have a lot riding on their draft picks, so they poke, prod and pry to find out all the information they can get their hands on before making a selection.

The questions get personal, but they also tend to get repeated often when you go through 26 teams. Players either in the NCAA ranks or headed for them are allowed to be at the combine for only 48 hours, and Gardiner, a Deephaven, Minn., native, heard one particular inquiry often in that time.

"A lot of teams asked me why I wasn't going to the Gophers," Gardiner said.

His answer?

"I just said that Wisconsin's the right place for me," he said, "and the coaching there and the campus is really cool."

Gardiner, a defenseman who has signed a National Letter of Intent to join the Badgers next season, is expected to be the first player connected to the UW selected in the draft, which starts Friday night in Ottawa.

But the heat wasn't reserved solely for him.

Badgers defenseman Cody Goloubef also sat down for 26 interviews at the combine -- the league has 30 teams -- and found one question particularly difficult to answer.

That query: What is going to keep you from playing in the NHL?

"It's kind of tough because you don't know how to answer that," said Goloubef, who was ranked 34th among North American skaters by the NHL's Central Scouting Service. "You don't want to give them an answer that's going to distinguish you not making it."

Gardiner, a speedy defenseman who was ranked 23rd by Central Scouting, was set to travel to Ottawa on Thursday morning and take part in a treadmill test with the New Jersey Devils, who hold the 21st selection in the first round, that night.

Friday morning was scheduled to bring meetings with the Florida Panthers (their first pick is No. 31 overall, the first selection of the second round), the Anaheim Ducks (No. 12) and the Ottawa Senators (No. 18) as the hours count down to the 6 p.m. Central Time start.

Gardiner said he hasn't built up any expectations of how things will go down Friday night, when the first 30 picks are made. The second through seventh rounds are Saturday.

"Every time somebody gets picked, I'll be kind of nervous just to see if it's me or not," he said. "I'll be sitting in my seat waiting to get called up, and hopefully I will get called up. It's going to be fun and exciting and nerve-racking at the same time."