Recap: Thrashers Prospect Camp '07

Over at the Blueland Blog, you can find some really neat pieces on specific players (Holzapfel, LaVallee) that attended this year's Prospect Camp at the Ice Forum in Duluth. As a matter of fact, there are also some nice write-ups at Thrashers Talons and Southeast Shootout about how they felt about what went down late last week and earlier this week.

With that said, I made my appearance at the Ice Forum on Thursday and I definitely did not leave disappointed... well, at least not with the hockey. All of the players that participated in the week-long camp were either players that have contractual ties to the Thrashers organization (like recent draft picks like Bryan Little and Brett Sterling, for example) or players that Thrashers scouts felt like examining a little more. As a result, I basically had no idea who was who. I'm lucky if I can even remember the names of some notables, but forget it if I can pick out faces. So trying to track down Riley Holzapfel, Tobias Endstrom, and Chad Denny (among countless others) was damned near impossible. Sure, there were points that I could narrow it down, but it was essentially a crapshoot.

You could definitely tell that the Thrashers organization wasn't fooling around when they invited this current group of "baby Thrashers" (as I like to call 'em) to the camp. The potential for these kids to succeed is evident in their energy and skills that were on display. There were great defensive plays during the scrimaging, some absolutely gnarly offensive moves to the net, and the goaltending was just quality.

Oh yeah, I did have to mention the scrimaging, didn't I? It was noted on the Blueland Blog that 4-on-4 scrimaging took place this past Monday and that it would happen again on the last day of camp. As a result to that "announcement", I felt as if there were more people there than would typically be for a prospect camp of baby Thrashers. Regardless, it was an excellent turnout for Thrashers fans and hockey fans in general.

Hmm, back to the bit about the scrimaging... For the first hour or so, there were the typical drills and skating that has to occur at these kind of happenings. Goalies were tested, passes were tape-to-tape or bust, and skates were viciously cutting into the ice. Then the kids left the rink for about 15-20 minutes while the ice was resurfaced, and then the players who were all wearing sweaters of various colors earlier were now sporting either red or blue. The plus to this event, for me, was that everyone was numbered. The minus was that I still had no idea who was who. Either way, the scrimage itself was a neat thing to watch. It was evident that the players knew it was their last day together, so some guys really gave it their all. Of course, there were the occasional broken passes and whiffed shots, but a bunch of 'em wanted to prove their worth at this NHL prospect camp, goalies included.

The scrimage was broken into two 25-minute halves, and then it was surprisingly followed up by a shootout. I have almost no knowledge of what happens in the lower ranks of hockey, so I'm completely unfamilar if other leagues use the shootout as a means to determine a winner and a loser of a tie game. Maybe this was a new concept for the kids or maybe it was just for fun - I know I didn't expect it, that's for sure. It kind of resembled the first shootout that the Thrashers participated in during the first year it was put into effect. It was a preseason game against the Panthers (I think), and all of the preseason games included the shootout whether the game was over or if it was a tie. Call it practice for the real deal, if you will. And all I can remember from that inaugural shootout was Marc Savard going in for the shot, setting up, over-thinking it, and eventually making it a sloppy attempt that resulted in him kinda hugging the opposing goalie. That's not to say that this "prospect shootout" was along the same lines as that, but I could sense some unfamiliarity with it in both shooters and goalies.

As I've already mentioned, players did stand out, but I have no idea who they were. The only player I could honestly pick out was Bryan Little and he seemed to handle the puck well, just not in the one-on-one situations so much. As far as goalies, I noticed that Dan Turple is massive. I mean, the guy has to be 6'5" or something - he looked just tremendous in the crease. Either that's a good thing (for intimidation) or a bad thing (uh, five-hole?). One goalie was standing out during the scrimage, and I'm sure that was Ondrej Pavelec (based on what I keep reading from others who attended). The other guy (Perugini) didn't leave any kind of impression on me, and Dan Kamal's kid, Chris, was ballsy just being out there. It must've been an eye-opening experience to be right out of high school, being examined by minor league coaches and, well, the Thrashers, too. I gotta give the guy credit for sticking with it and keeping his head up. Personally, I would've been intimidated as anything trying to keep guys like Little and Sterling from scoring.

Pics will be posted soon... and that's the only disappointment I have with the afternoon in Duluth. Sooner or later I'm going to take a class or two in photography and figure out how to take some action pics and make them look decent. Either my timing was off whenever I tried to take a pic or whatever I did shoot came out overly blurred. There are a select few that I feel mildly satisfied with and I'll put those up on flickr in the next hour or so.

Up next - let's discuss the schedule, shall we?! We'll save that topic for the weekend.

It's so great to be blogging hockey again!