bzarcher | (no subject)

Prospect camp - Day 3

Crossposting here and at HFBoards to make Dave W. happy. :D

Our first on the ice today was Sigalet, followed by Fornataro and Kosmachev.

Several forwards wearing Blue vests - Voracek, Legein, Kubalik, Mayorov, Hughes, and Calvert? Appears they're one "squad" for the scrimmage purposes, either working as 2 man pairs or a full set of 2 3 man lines.

No Ruth, Vogelhuber, or Johnson brothers that I saw? Possibly due to the much heavier amount of contact stuff today, but I'm not sure.

Attendance started small and got much bigger as the practice went on, then started to trickle back out after the zamboni break.

Dorsett spent a lot of time giving Legein some pointers or talking to him about things he was doing. I get the vibe that if both are in the Cuse to start the year, it's gonna be "little crazy brother" and "big crazier brother." I also noticed that he did stuff like grab gatorade or towels for Dorsett and Sesitito a few times and then sat down to talk with them.

For all the talk about Legein having an attitude problem in Syracuse earlier this year when he went up after the OHL playoffs? I'm not seeing it. He's been working hard and paying attention to the coaches, seems to be getting on pretty well with the various guys at the camp, and he's been going out after practice ends and doing some work on his own or with the other players / Tyler Wright pretty consistently each day. He hasn't complained about doing cleanup of pucks and sticks after practice, either.

I'm wondering if getting sent home from Syracuse while they were still in the playoff hunt got the message through to him that he needed to get his act together and put a lid on the attitude with his teammates.

The drills started with defensemen working on point shots and pinching in, and forwards shooting as they entered the zone and slap shots from the upper dots. Mior worked in goal on the D side, York with the forwards.

The next drill was rebounds and working 2 on 1 breaks. Mayorov did fine shooting, and his passing was once again better today, but he seemed to have trouble picking up rebounds. A lot of whiffs or the puck getting into his skates instead of shooting or getting it on his stick.

"Blue" forwards and "White" forwards then ran drills on seperate sides of the ice with the defense coming in from center ice and sending lead passes to the forwards, who then attacked the net. Lots of playmaking and setup attempts. Then it was some more practice at odd man rushes on each side.

Voracek seemed to be doing a bit of guiding and yelling stuff out to guys during these drills on where to go and where to be, and they seemed to listen. Did he ever act as a captain or leadership guy on the ice in Halifax?

We then had a bit of 3 on 3 "line" drills.

Blue lines:

Voracek - Calvert - Hughes

Mayorov - Kubalik - Legein

White lines:

Dorsett - Sestito - Fornataro

Greer - Sucharski - Didiomette

Guys got shuffled in and out a bit, but those were the "starting" sets.

They ran some passing and attack drills before the Zamboni came in, and then we got a little surprise.

4 on 4 scrimmages!

Defensemen were split in half according to some formula they must have discussed earlier (Blue team D were not wearing vests), and blue and white benches were set up. 2 defensemen, two forwards. Mior as the Blue goalie, York as the White.

Starting lines:

Blue:

Voracek - Legein
Weber - Golobouef

White:

Dorsett - Sestito
Henry - Clitsome

Shifts changed about every 30 seconds - coach whistled, you dropped what you were doing and came to the bench for line changes. All forwards and defense changing at the same time.

Mayorov and Kubalik were used as a pair for this as well, and after the trouble they had on Monday/Tuesday, I thought they seemed to be working much better on the ice together today.

Lots of board battles and guys getting forced out of the middle of the ice and over to the perimeters. No shyness about hitting, either.

First goal was by McGurk from Sestito for White, followed by another for Sucharski from Eddy.

Then Kubalik responded with a goal assisted by Mayorov, and the Blue team tried to rally, but unfortunately they couldn't bang another one in before the whistle blew to end the scrimmage. (About 10 minutes total). The White team won about 2 minutes of relaxing on the bench while the Blue team got sprints for their consolation prize.

My impression was that York was a bit more solid in goal than Mior, and that helped White out a lot, and that a couple of the goals started off turnovers because a Blue or White player passed the puck to "his" defenseman to clear it...only to realize he'd shot it to the wrong guy and that defenseman was actually on the other team.

After that, it was "time to have some fun!", according to Noel - another 10 minute 4 on 4 game, but this time it was all forwards on one side, and all defensemen on the other. Mior went into net for the D, York for the forwards.

First goal came from Greer for the forwards, but Noel waved it off after some razzing about Sesitito hooking one of the D-men in the corners.

About a minute later, Dorsett officially opened scoring on a nice feed from Sucharski, then Sesitito made up for the earlier wave off by putting them up 2-0 on an assist from Legein.

Page had a booming unassisted goal from the point to bring it to 2-1, then Sestito had another goal waved off. Mior had handled the puck, dropped it to the ice, and whiffed on his clearing attempt, and since he was right there, Sestito banged it into the net. Noel said that it was a no goal because they didn't let Mior clear it (goalies were clearing any stopped pucks - the only face offs came after goals).

The forwards seemed to get a bit deflated from that and let the Defense chase them back into their own end, and Delsile scored the tying goal on a feed from Regner.

If you're asking where Voracek was in this, he was mostly playing as a "defensive" pairing, and the general consensus of Skraut (one of the HFBoards posters), his wife, and I was that he was being very good defensively - he wasn't on the ice for any of the D goals - but that he wasn't going forward to attack as much. He also got bit by some bad timing. I can think of three or four times he started to carry the puck up ice or was crossing into the offensive zone on a break when the whistle blew to end his shift and he had to turn around and get back to the bench rather than getting the chance to follow through.

Going from the ensuing faceoff we had another chase back and forth along the ice, punctuated by Legein -jacking up- Sigalet on a check that laid him out for a good 2-3 seconds. It looked like that might be it for scoring as time was running out, and Noel called out that if they ended tied, there would be a shootout to figure out the winner, and the forwards turned up the pressure a bit to try and force that shootout or get another goal.

The defense, however, rebounded and got the GWG from Clitsome, shooting through traffic and putting it over York's shoulder, so York and the Forwards were rewarded with another set of sprints, and then the end of camp for the day.

After things broke up, Holden and Sestito skated around the benches for a bit razzing each other, and Dorsett, Legein, Mayorov, and Voracek went out to clean up pucks. Voracek and Dorsett cleaned up the "D" zone, and Legein and Mayorov spent a little time practicing shooting together around the net before gathering the pucks up and heading off.