Rookie Tournament Observations
1. I thought Ben Harpur was the most impressive prospect at the rookie tournament, not only did he get 4 pts against the leafs, he cleared out the front of the net, he hit, he blocked shots & he made some nice exit passes to start the transition out of the zone.
2. I was also very impressed with the McCormick, Dzingel & Thompson line, Bingo is in for a treat, if Luke decides to keep that line together. They are fast, they are opportunistic, tenacious defensively & they will fight, they seem to have meshed together really well during the tournament.
3 Interesting to see that Matt Murphy got an invite to training camp since I thought he was the 3rd best defenceman on the rookie team & the best of the invitees. Claesson was steady, not flashy, not dominating but steady & good at everything.
4. The weakness in the team I though was the goaltending, especially Dreidger who let in about 7 goals in a game & a half, although he played well in the final game shootout. I think he will likely start the yr in Indiana, in the ECHL & I imagine Green-Eggs-&-Ham (Greenham) will likely be the back up in Bingo to start the yr anyway.
5. I was a little disappointed in Paul, Guptil, Prince, Culek, Dunn & Lazar who I was expecting would all have played better, they were alright but not dominating as some were being advertised they would be. I can't really point to any one thing any of them did badly expect maybe Guptil but he made up for it in game 3, they just didn't make the plays I would have expected them to make or score or dominate in any way. They were okay, no more, no less.
6. Kramer impressed me, not only did he have 3 goals in the tournament, he had 3 fights as well. He played well defensively, he hit, he stood up for teammates, he went to the net & harrassed the goalie. He did whatever was needed to win & wore the C in game 3, not too shabby for an enforcer type player.
7. IMO the best prospects in the tournament for Ottawa were Harpur, Claesson, Murphy, Puempel, McCormick, Dzingel, Thompson, Kramer, Perron who had two nice goals in game 3 & Robinson who was flying around the rink.