First, as a heads up, the best source for up to the minute Canes stuff coming out of practice, words from the coach, line combinations, injuries, etc. continues to be Chip Alexander from the News & Observer. You can stay pretty up to date by following him on Twitter (@ice_chip), but his blog also has useful nuggets that do not also make it into the Twitter stream. The latest as of writing this blog is a write-up on Drayson Bowman that you can find
HERE.
The article is a good short read on Drayson Bowman who is in the category of younger but experienced players who are flying under in the early stages of training camp. He played well filling in for the injured Jiri Tlusty with EStaal/Semin in Sunday’s scrimmage notching a goal and a bunch of other good hockey. The line did not miss a beat with the change. Most notable from Chip’s article is the fact that he spent more time on strength/weight training and gained about 10 pounds of muscle. As long as there is no impact on his mobility, I think this could be a key component to establishing himself as a long-timer as an NHL depth forward. In his 106 games of NHL experience, he has proven pretty reliable defensively and in terms of being a decent safe and sound checking line forward. A little more scoring potential is there which would obviously help, but I think the bigger thing for him would be improvement in
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In a fit of scheduling genius, I scheduled a handful of work things in Raleigh and handled a bunch of phone call stuff from PNC, so I was able to attend most of both Tuesday practice sessions. Notes are below:
9am practice:
--Core lines/combos looked similar: Ruutu/JStaal/Dalpe, Skinner/Lindholm/Gerbe. Gleason/Komisarek, Sekera/Faulk, Harrison/Murphy. Tlusty skated with this group in a regular jersey, not with EStaal/Semin in 2nd group. Wild guess is 2 things: 1) Bowman will skate with EStaal/Semin tomorrow, so he might as well practice with them; 2) I think the Tlusty/EStaal/Semin line has enough run time that it makes sense to get someone else a little time there in case you need to later.
--Practice was more system oriented with fewer hockey 101 drills and a lot of time spent moving working forecheck and moving the puck 5v5. They also worked on basic power play playing 5v0 to work system basics and then 5v2 to simulate normal forward pressure on puck movement.
--With more system type stuff things were not as scrappy, but it continues to be very clear that Muller wants to push pace at practice. There was the usual, occasional whistling, hollering, stick banging to keep the break between turns short and the pace high.
--Brind’Amour spent a good amount of time working with Lindholm on faceoffs at the end of practice and Brett Sutter (pretty sure I got that right) also joined in. Again it is a wild guess, but Boychuk/Rask/Blanchard could say something, as my guess is that these are 3 players likely to make it past the first big cut (and therefore need line mates) but are likely not inside the 12-13 forwards likely to make the roster at this point.
12pm practice:
--Core lines also similar except Tlusty mentioned above. Bowman/EStaal/Semin. Hainsey part of this group.
--Between full-group stuff, the coaching staff (Lewis I believe) ran all of the young defensemen through the non-puck drills focused on skating transitions. It was interesting to see that even at this pretty high level of hockey the learning still in process and how some looked more comfortable than others.
--Drills and system stuff were pretty much the same.
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Circus comes to town
If you watch closely enough, Alexander Semin is a regular on-ice circus performer between drills. When other players rest, he often takes a few regular shots, but he also does the thing where he scoops the puck off the ice, flips it 30-feet in the air and then catches it on the blade of his stick. He has also been known to bat a puck or perform random other feats of hand-eye coordination. But today was a whole other level. At the end of practice, he had a bit of a 1-on-1 battle with Khudobin. The visual itself was priceless entertainment with random on-ice somersaults and acrobatics seemingly tied to whether Semin scored or Khudobin stopped it. With the intensity level of the trash-talking and random yammering that went on during this competition, I have to imagine it would have been 5X better if I spoke Russian. I will keep my eyes peeled to see if anyone got video of this highlight.
Per my comments above, if you check @ice_chip’s Twitter stream from today, you can find what looks to be most of a starting lineup for tomorrow night’s first preseason game. I will put up a write-up of what I will be looking for in first preseason game and going forward through the 4 games in 4 nights stretch.
Twitter = @CarolinaMatt63 where the volume of hockey conversation is ramping toward regular season.
Go Canes!
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