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Seth Jones has had enough of this waiting around. He is ready to get to work.
The top-rated skater in today’s NHL Draft at the Prudential Center in Newark has heard enough of the hype, has read enough stories about himself and his famous father, former NBA forward Ronald “Popeye” Jones. Although with the No. 1-overall pick, the Avalanche already have indicated they’re going to take forward Nate MacKinnon, it is Jones who has drawn most of the attention — and his status in the draft doesn’t mean a whole lot at this point.
“I just want to play hockey, and it doesn’t really matter who I play for or wherever I go,” Jones said on Thursday while at the 86th-floor observation deck at the Empire State Building. “I am just going to go into training camp and try to make the team.”
Odds are the 18-year-old Jones, a 6-foot-4 defenseman with supreme skating ability and advanced poise will fall to the Panthers at No. 2, and that is just fine by him. His father was a second-round pick of the Houston Rockets in 1992, which followed a great career at Murray State — before playing at a mid-major school was a cool thing.
“Just stay level headed,” is how Jones described the advice given to him by his dad, who played 11 years in the NBA for six different teams and was an assistant coach for the Nets this past season. “He wasn’t really at the stature that I am being rated so highly. I think he went in the second round, but at the same time he has been through all of this and he knows how hard you have to work in games.”
Jones was born in Frisco, Texas, while his dad was playing for the Mavericks. He first skated as a 5-year-old while in Denver, where Popeye went to play for Nuggets. By the time Seth was 15, he moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., to play with the USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. He graduated high school in three years, and was offered a scholarship to the powerhouse hockey program at the University of North Dakota.
Yet Jones bypassed college and went to play for the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL last season, where he was a standout and his team won the league championship. He earned rookie-of-the-year honors by piling up 14 goals and 41 assists in 61 regular-season games, and added five goals and 10 assists in 21 playoff games.
“Seth is a big, rangy defenseman who has a nice command of his shifts,” said B.J. MacDonald of NHL Central Scouting. “He has the ability to be a game-changer because he has good instincts and awareness. He’s an underrated passer, possesses solid one-on-one play and can skate the puck out of danger at any time. He’s already the complete package, but I get the feeling he still has another gear to go to.”
The Winterhawks made it to Canada’s junior league championships, the Memorial Cup, where they lost 6-4 to the Hailifax Mooseheads — ironically enough led by MacKinnon, who had a hat trick and two assists. The two were together at the Empire State Building, part of the festivities to try and create some hype for an event that’s huge in Canada but not so much here. Through his nervousness about heights, MacKinnon purveyed the same humbleness that seems inherent players coming out of the Canadian junior leagues.
“I don’t think expecting yourself to go first is the right way to go about it,” MacKinnon said. “It would be nice to, but to get drafted as soon as possible and get to work will be good.”
Ah yes, work, the same thing Seth Jones is ready for. At this point, both hope the day comes and goes and they can get back to the ice, where they are comfortable and where their careers are looked at with nothing but upside.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Jones said. “I have been looking forward to this week for a while, and it has taken forever to get here, and now it’s here.”
— Additional reporting by Josh Silverberg.
bcyrgalis@nypost.com