If you are checking in after a weekend away from the internet because of the beautiful weather in Raleigh, you can find my notes from yesterday’s Red-White scrimmage
HERE.
Deservedly noted in the scrimmage report is the play of Zach Boychuk. After notching 2 goals in the scrimmage on Saturday, he was noticeably good and just noticeably noticeable jamming with Tim Gleason, finishing checks and creating a couple turnovers on the forecheck. At a minimum, I think it is safe to say that he has played his way past the first big cut which will occur sometime this week.
Coming into camp, I was not high on Zach Boychuk’s chances at all. Unlike some of my unique ideas/opinions which sometimes come to fruition and often do not, I was nowhere close to lonely with this one. To me Zach Boychuk was a bit one-dimensional as an offensive-oriented player who needed to earn a spot on scoring line and score to contribute at the NHL level. He seemed to lack the size, defensive ability, etc. to fit in any other role. And in a couple albeit limited trials at the NHL level in training camp and during the regular season, he had yet to look like a player who would be able to stay at the NHL level.
His 2012-13 campaign seemed damning in terms of his NHL prospects. He was playing very well in Charlotte when the lockout ended. Being in game shape and in a rhythm, players like him seemingly had an advantage at the outset of the season as many NHLers worked through the kinks in real games minus any kind of real training camp. He initially got a chance and played the Canes first game at left wing on the EStaal/Semin line before shuffling sent him to the press box as a healthy scratch very quickly. He then was claimed off waivers by Pittsburgh when the Canes tried to return him to Charlotte. He played 7 games for the Penguins as an injury replacement. In 7 games mostly next to Evgeni Malkin, Boychuk notched exactly 0 scoring points. (There is the damning part.) When Pittsburgh became healthier it was no surprise when they put him back on waivers. Next Boychuk was claimed by Nashville, played 5 relatively uneventful games there and was ultimately placed on waivers again. The Canes got him back when no one else claimed him for their NHL roster, and he spent the rest of the year in Charlotte. When the 2012-13 season was all said and done, Zach Boychuk had been cut by not 1 but 3 NHL teams. Along the way, the Kirk Muller-led Canes kept trying out any available option to get bigger and grittier. Jeremy Welsh, Jared Staal, Tim Wallace, Nic Blanchard, Adam Hall and Brett Sutter all auditioned at different points during the season. While the Canes ran a revolving door of bigger players through the bottom 6 forward spots, Boychuk was relegated to Charlotte.
When you add up the couple of short failed NHL auditions, Muller’s clear desire to get bigger at forward and Boychuk’s time in Charlotte when about everyone else got a try in Raleigh, he figured to be a less than 50% chance to even make it past the first cuts.
Even after a great start to training camp, it is way too early to give him a spot on the NHL roster. He is still smallish. Though he is making strides rapidly to round out his game (reference the forecheck comments), no way is he ready to be labeled as a “great 2-way player.” And there are still a number of other players in the mix, and pecking order can change significantly based on performance in preseason games against other teams. But as I said previously, I think Boychuk has already played his way past the first cut which was no way a sure thing for him entering camp.
I called the Sergey Tolchinsky story the best Canes people story of the summer. Almost on cue with Tolchinsky slowed by injury and sent back to juniors on Sunday, Zach Boychuk has taken the torch and has become the best people story 4 days into Canes training camp. And he has scored personal character points that cannot be taken away even if he ultimately does not make the team.
After the Canes gave up on him after only 1 game in which the team in general stunk, he could have had negative things to say about the opportunity, the coach or more politically correct maybe just the unfairness/challenge of that situation. He could be moping around feeling like hockey has been unfair to him. At a minimum, he could have shown up with a defeatist attitude at camp knowing that he had no chance, half-heartedly went through the motions ready to head to Charlotte and just hoped to get a fresh start in another organization.
Instead we got this:
--He came to town early and joined the first group of players in town for informal skates in August.
--He has been a social part of the Canes community at events, on Twitter, attending NC State football games and just generally making himself part of the community despite the fact that people like myself give him little chance of being in it for more than a few weeks.
--He showed a very obvious “I am willing to do what it takes to play in the NHL” attitude in the way he has played in the early scrimmages.
--And he did some of that scoring stuff too.
I have not been high on Boychuk. I am very careful to be fair and objective in my writing, but I would be surprised if I could find much positive within my Zach Boychuk evaluations. In my blog last week where I laid out the odds of players making the team, I pretty much put him in a group of players on the outside looking in and gave him a narrow 10% of making the team. And while his chances of making the team have clearly risen from 10%, the hockey analyst part of me realizes that he is still amongst many competing for limited openings.
But as a fan, I am fully onboard the Zach Boychuk bus. Rather than having a defeatist attitude and going through the motions in a situation where he maybe is not really wanted, he is doing everything right.
--How can you not root for a Jeff Skinnerish size guy standing up to Tim Gleason and taking a bit of physical abuse to do his job?
--How can you not like a player stepping outside of his natural comfort zone as a scorer and working hard to improve on forechecking, finishing checks and other things better suited to bigger players who have always had that as part of their ticket to the NHL?
--How can you not like it when someone fails, arguably 3 times, and rather than timidly accepting defeat as permanent comes back with a new determination to be better and succeed?
If Zach Boychuk makes the Hurricanes roster to start the 2013-14 season and does good things from there, a chunk of my prognostications and predictions as a hockey analyst of sorts will be proven wrong. But after 4 days of Canes training camp, as a fan, I will be absolutely thrilled if that is the case.
Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63 where the volume of Canes yammering continues to grow as we get closer to real hockey!
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