Canucks will be likely be signing a few college free agents as soon as their teams are eliminated. Utica will have some more healthy bodies fairly soon.
The NCAA tournament begins this weekend. The Comets will play 3 more in the next 4 days and then Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday the next week. By the time the college kid is signed and sent to Utica, practices to learn the system, and gets game time, we could be looking at this kid for purposes of next season's roster.
Remember, unless the kid was drafted by Vancouver (Demko/Boeser), he'd have to be a free agent, which means he was never drafted which makes him a longer shot than draft picks. Milos Bubela from RPI recently signed to an ATO is an example. He's a hard working kid, shows skills and talent, but has less going for him than Cassels and LaBate at this stage in his first game as a rookie pro with no training camp nor 63 pro games under his belt like them. They have struggled all season and work as hard or harder and know the system. I can't fault the work ethic of either of these guys, but the pros they go up against have been a real challenge for them and they are just staring to get it and gaining some success.
The Larkin type college players, if they can be found, won't get here until it's too late.
Without any of their injured or called up players, the best hope is that Travis can work some more miracles and get this bunch of ECHL stars to score some goals to go along with the puck pressure, fore checking, shoot the puck form everywhere, hard back checking, tight defensive game he has them playing. It got them to OT twice this past weekend with 1 and 2 goal totals at the end of regulation. Goals win games as we all know and they just can't seem to score.