You know me (Smokin' Ray) and trying new things. Today we have a special guest article by Steve Schulte. Enjoy...
Rookie Camp Day 3:
Started the day a little later than I had planned but still with plenty of time to get to the rink. En route I ended up following a van covered with Oilers stickers and flags all the way from millwoods till I needed to get gas at a Shell Station. My gameplan was to try to watch all the second rounders from this year in detail as well as Petry and Bunz, this proved difficult so I’m just going to write all my observations.
The session started out similar to the Monday session, skating coach Steve Serdachny started the boys off with a few laps to warm up. During this time I had to take notice of the fact that Marincin had incredibly skinny legs and would need to bulk them up if he wants to skate at an NHL level. What I also noticed was how ahead of the pack Petry was when it came to skating, smooth stride and he looked generally comfortable.
Serdachny had them do a drill where they would cross each line on one leg and then switch to backwards and forwards respectively. Pretty much the whole team with the exception of MPS had trouble with this exercise to the point where I believe it was Lander really struggled.
Continuing with goofy drills Steve now had the players doing one leg, with the other one on top of a puck. Here was the first wipeout of the day which came ironically from one of their best skaters, Taylor Hall had a fall, which is ok because I happen to fall for Hall, Yeah I did.
The next drill was hard to watch for some players but a pleasure for others, the object was to skate from one end of the ice to the other while stickhandling two pucks, Eberle, Pitlick, MPS, and Hall did this with ease, except the first run MPS lost a puck into the corner, they followed this up by doing it backwards.
Last drill without being able to shoot a puck, all players were spaced out around the whole rink, and had to skate around and jump over their sticks, my observation here was Petry in front of me looking sexy again, and Brandon Davidson (6th round pick) struggling mightily, also M&M (Martin Marincin) tripped over his stick once, hilarity ensued.
The next thing was Sillinger explaining the plan for the next drill, there were 28 players on the ice and 27 of them were taking a knee, the one not taking a knee was good old Steve’s favorite prospect Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson, nothing interesting but I found it weird, picture is on my twitter account.
We now enter my favorite drill of the day, players were paired off about 4 meters from a goalie, had to do a little lap mixed of forward and backward skating and then fight to take the shot on net, I didn’t see the person that MPS knocked off the puck to score but it was a thing of beauty, I think he can keep up with the physical game if we see things like that occur.
Players left to flood the ice after about a half hour, I heard Sillinger tell a cameraman that tomorrow we would be in rink A for the 3 on 3 tournament, which is good because it has more seats.
Buchberger takes over running the session, lots of shooting and puck work, at this point I turned my attention to T. Bunz, love his Tigers pads. Practicing two on one drills Bunz shows incredible lateral movement and sound positioning, and in two series Pitlick hit the post and was just caught on a glove save, he has a sweet shot.
A couple three on two drills but nothing very interesting, weird thing I noticed, Cornet looks a lot like MPS, however skill wise they are on different plateau’s as Cornet doesn’t really impress me.
Coaching staff treat the fans to a 4 on 4 session, was not expecting this. Notable players on each team, Grey: Hall, MPS, Lander, Marincin, Petry. Blue: Eberle, Pitlick that midget walk-on, Jones’s. Guys next to me bet on each team with eachother, I assumed the one to pick Grey had easy money but he ended up losing. At this point I was pissed I didn’t bring a notepad to record who scores because I have a terrible memory, but the midget walk-on of who’s name escapes me cherry picked hard and blew one past Pitton.
Final thing they did, also to the delight of the fans was a quick shootout, notably MPS, Eberle both missed, Petry sniped one home and when Mr. Taylor Hall put it in the net the place went a little crazy.
Not the best write-up but what can you do I’m not a blogger, I’d like to thank the guys at Oilers Jambalaya and Oilfield Hockey for letting me do a short piece.
Also as some of you know I am a comedian and am performing in a show Monday July 19th at The Comic Strip in West Ed, Tickets are 7.50 a piece however I have lots of giveaways, if you would like to attend message me on on the twitter account provided below. Final note, if you are going to the Baseball game tonight and sitting in the prospects section come say hi, I will be wearing a shirt with abs on it as I am still trying to get my Hartikainen picture.
Thanks:
Steve Schulte
Twitter.com/steve_schulte
Youtube.com/thaseron
