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A little while ago as the 2014 NHL draft came to an end, I wrote a blog on how I felt that the Calgary Flames may have arguably walked away with the best offensive player in the draft.
While the general consensus was that Aaron Ekblad was the top overall pick, I mentioned that Sam Bennett was one player who shifted anywhere from 1st overall to 2nd, and ended up being selected 4th by the Flames.
Prior to seeing Sam hit the ice with Calgary’s rookies, I mentioned that the skillset which this player possesses is simply top notch. His level of work ethic, his determination on and off the ice, his dynamic scoring potential, his hockey IQ and on-ice vision; all at elite levels.
And if fans weren’t excited for this draft pick prior to the 2014 development camp kicking off, there is likely a new found excitement within this franchise. Bennett made headlines after undressing Flames’ 2nd round selection Mason McDonald during a shout-out drill. And here’s the thing, McDonald is currently one of the strongest goalie prospect for the Flames.
Here is the clip, for those who haven’t had the opportunity to see the “news worthy” goal.
While many fans and members of the media have expressed their excitement over Bennett’s strong play and shout-out goal, Brad Treliving actually tried to defuse the situation which I was actually impressed with.
“You get a little flavour for what guys can do in their game, but let’s not get too excited in the first week of July,” cautioned Flames GM Brad Treliving.
“We’re excited about these players, but let’s just keep it in context about what time of year it is ... A lot of this stuff, in a week’s time, it will all be forgotten, and we’ll wait until training camp, and that will be a better barometer of where everybody is at.”
The reason I was impressed with Treliving’s comments here is because I honestly felt that the new GM would echo the same sentiments or excitement for Sam, which has been expressed by the masses so far. Contrarily, the GM kept his poise. Was it perhaps because he didn’t want all this attention to get to Sam’s head? Possibly.
But whatever his primary reason for trying to defuse all the added attention was, I have to say that it’s a breath of fresh air. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting sick of hearing how much value a newly drafted player already has from GM’s around the league.
And these are players, I should add, who have yet to play an NHL game in their careers or actually earn any professional respect around the league, outside of being drafted high and having very promising young careers.
Treliving’s comments after the Monday scrimmage:
That said, my above point isn’t trying to dismiss publicly speaking about a prospect/rookie in a positive or optimistic way. Rather, it’s to say that of those who make comments which are possibly fueled by emotions, it’s comforting knowing that the GM can remain level headed.
Anyways, back to the prospect camp.
There were a few bigger guys who I watched footage of so far throughout camp, and I’ve got to say that I was impressed with their skating. One who stood out was 6’7, 220lbs Hunter Smith who was recently drafted 54th overall by the Flames. Although you would expect a man of his size to struggle in his skating, he was much quicker than I believe most expected, which is nice to see.
“He might not look the prettiest, but as we found out during the year, he doesn’t finish last in too many races,” said Flames GM Brad Treliving earlier this week. “The exciting part is he’s still so raw. Physically, you look at him and he’s a big kid. But there’s a lot of filling out to do. There’s a lot of strength to do. And even mechanically, with his stride, there is some work to be done.
“He’s going to take some time,” Treliving continued. “As we improve (his skating), that will make him even a better player. But you’re right — you look at him now, and he gets to places. He arrives on time. Even in a couple of drills, he was beating people.
“It probably doesn’t hurt when you take one stride, and it’s probably equal to about four strides of the normal person.”
That said, another big man whose skating I noticed was Keegan Kanzig, although for a different reason. At 6’5 and 242lbs, Keegan’s appears much heaving on his skates…and I don’t mean this to sound obvious as he has about 20 pounds on Smith, but his skating seemed challenging at times for the big defender.
Both players are still very young and have a ton of conditioning to work on with respect to their games, so we shouldn’t look to write off any player of their ages, however of the two, I am less certain of Keegan’s ability to get to NHL foot speeds which are required to be a successful defenseman.
There will be another scrimmage held at WinSports today at 10am MDT which will be aired live at the following link - http://video.flames.nhl.com/videocenter/
Monday’s scrimmage saw the following line combinations, and I would imagine that we see some different pairings today as the coaching staff tries to get a better idea of who’s ahead of others in their development.
GROUP ‘A’
Morgan Klimchuk - Bill Arnold - Austin Carroll
Bryce Van Brabant - Lukas Zejdl - Adam Chapie
Scott Allen - Damian Bourne - Brendan Bell
Allan Caron - Ryan Culkin
Keegan Kanzig - Jason Fram
John Gilmour - Brandon Hickey
Mason McDonald
Cole Huggins
GROUP ‘B’
Johnny Gaudreau - Sam Bennett - Tim Harrison
David Wolf - Grayson Downing - Hunter Smith
Kenny Agostino - Casey Bailey - Brandon Denham.
Eric Roy - Brett Kulak
Chris Dienes - Zach Tolkinen
Doug Carr
Corbin Boes
That’s all for today, thanks for reading!
Calgary Flames Blogger • 
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