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scamperdog
08-19-2007, 04:23 PM
Blazers going into camp with real “sense of purpose”
by Gregg Drinnan www.kamloopsnews.ca

If there is to be a theme to the Kamloops Blazers’ training camp, it sounds as though it will have to do with “sense of purpose.”

Dean Clark, the WHL team’s general manager and head coach, said Tuesday that fans should be excited to get a look at young talent like forwards Jimmy Bubnick and Shayne Wiebe and defenceman Mark Schneider.

As well, Clark said, “Hopefully, fans will notice the sense of purpose with our veterans. I think that will be very evident.”

Veteran defenceman Ryan Bender, Clark said, already is wearing his game face.

The three-day rookie camp opens Aug. 23 at the Interior Savings Centre. However, main camp, which starts Aug. 26, will be held at Memorial Arena with The ATM occupied by INXS.

The Blazers’ Blue-White game will be played in The ATM on Aug. 29, 7 p.m.

The Blazers are coming off a winter in which they went 40-26-4-2, the first time they have won 40 regular-season games since 1998-99. However, a season of promise fizzled when they lost a first-round playoff series to the Prince George Cougars, losing four one-goal games, three of them in overtime.

The goal this season, as it always is, will be to improve.

“I don’t know if we put any pressure on ourselves,” Clark explained. “We want to get better and that is something that we’ve already talked about with some of the guys who are here.

“We already have 12 guys here and they are here with a little bit of a mission.”

The pressure isn’t any different, Clark said, than any other season.

“Pressure? We want to be as successful as we can be every season,” he said. “That pressure is always there. I don’t see it as pressure. I see it as us going out and achieving really good things.

“We had a pretty good regular season and we expect that again. Where we need to get better is in the postseason and we know that . . .”

While much of the hockey community has been abuzz about the Blazers’ off-ice situation, it has been business as usual for Clark and his staff as they put together training camp.

“As far as training camp, it’s been fine; we just march ahead,” Clark said. “The hardest thing for us has been ticket sales and that type of stuff because everyone is sitting back and waiting to see what’s going to happen. Once (River City Hockey Inc.) delivered their letter on July 18 — bang! — there’s been nothing going on.”

Clark said he spoke with management at Radio NL, which carries Blazers regular-season and playoff games.

“Things were going really well to that point, too,” he said, referring to ad sales. “But nothing’s happened since then.”

Of particular interest during training camp will be the 20-year-old situation. When main camp opens Aug. 26, five veterans — goaltender Dustin Butler, defencemen Ryan White and Bender, and forwards Brady Mason and Brock Nixon — will be competing for three spots.

“It will play itself out,” Clark said. “The five guys deserve to be here. They have worked very hard for the organization and it will play out the way it’s going to play out.”

Going into camp, Butler and James Priestner, 16, are one-two on the goaltending depth chart.

Clark is waiting to hear from Jason Sands, an Ontarian who is a product of the California Wave bantam AAA team and was in the Blazers’ camp two years ago. Sands, 18, backed up a bit with Kelowna when the Rockets ran into injury trouble late last season.

“He is in Ontario,” Clark said, “but said he was going to go to college in Kelowna. I suggested he come to Kamloops, try to make our hockey team and go to school here.

“He’s a smaller guy but he was good in our camp two years ago.”

On defence, one newcomer who has a shot at cracking the lineup is Darcy Huisman, 18, of Smithers. He spent last season with the BCHL’s Prince George Spruce Kings, the runners-up at the Royal Bank Cup, the Canadian junior A championship.

“He’s got some ability,” Clark said. “He plays with his head up and makes good decisions. He’d be an Aaron Keller-type player.”

Clark is especially looking forward to this camp because his staff — including assistants Shayne Zulyniak and Andrew Milne, and trainer Colin Robinson — has been a unit for one year and the 40 victories from last season show that they did have some success, something that makes teaching that much easier.

“It’s better for everybody involved, knowing that we’ve been through a camp together,” Clark said. “Going ahead with this one and knowing where we have to get to, it’s a lot easier. We know the direction we’re going, we know the page we’re on and that makes it easier for the players and it makes it easer for us to take care of business.”

Clark also said that there will be renewed focus on the defensive side of the game.

“We wanted to go out last season and be a more offensive team and be more entertaining, and we feel we did that,” he said. “But we still gave up a lot of goals and if you’re going to win you have to be able to defend. That has to be a focus for us.”

JUST NOTES: The Blazers will open with about 80 players in their rookie camp. When they open main camp, they’ll have about 60 bodies on hand. . . . They leave for Edmonton on Aug. 31 where they will take part in the Oil Kings’ preseason tournament which is to be played at Servus Credit Union Place in St. Albert. The Blazers’ open against the Regina Pats on Sept. 1. . . . The Blazers have started registering youngsters ages five to 12 for their Blueliner Breakfasts, which are going into their 24th season. Breakfast dates are Oct. 28, Dec. 2, Jan. 20 and Feb. 17. For more info, call the Blazers office at 828-1144.

scamperdog
08-23-2007, 07:18 PM
10 things to watch for in camp
by Gregg Drinnan www.kamloopsnews.ca

While adults scrap over ownership of the Kamloops Blazers, using newspaper advertisements, rather than hockey sticks, as weapons, about 110 players have arrived in town, all of them desperately wanting to be a part of this city’s WHL team.

About 70 of those players will take to the Interior Savings Centre ice surface today as the team’s three-day rookie camp begins. At stake, at least in the short term, are about 20 spots at main camp, which opens Sunday at Memorial Arena. (Why Memorial Arena? A team known as INXS has The ATM booked.)

Anyway . . . with the Blazers looking for bigger and better things than last season, when a highly successful 40-victory regular season was followed by a four-game first-round playoff exit, here are 10 things to watch for as training camp leads to the regular season:

1. Goaltender Dustin Butler, 20, looked like the steal of the century when he was acquired early last season from the Portland Winter Hawks. By mid-January he had set a franchise record for shutouts in a season. But he isn’t overly big, appeared to hit a wall in late January or early February, and struggled through the playoffs where he was outplayed by the Prince George Cougars’ Real Cyr. Butler is going to have to be good — very good — if he is to hold down one of the three 20-year-old spots.

2. Ryan White was this team’s most consistent defenceman last season. He’s 20 now and looks to be on the outside looking in, with Butler, defenceman Ryan Bender and centre Brock Nixon the early favourites for the three overage spots. But never say never because should injuries strike, or should a younger goaltender come available, or . . .

3. Jordan Rowley was a 16-year-old rookie defenceman last season and he looked it, if only in the first half. In the second half, his confidence grew and he started to do things with the puck that gave credence to his having been highly touted. Will that confidence continue to grow?

4. Keaton Ellerby, who is with the Canadian junior team in Russia today, won’t join the Blazers until perhaps just before their first regular-season game, Sept. 21 against the visiting Chilliwack Bruins. His ill-timed decisions exasperated the coaching staff last season, until he was benched for one game. The 10th overall pick in the 2007 NHL draft by the Florida Panthers, will Ellerby come back from his hectic summer in a better frame of mind? Or will he be dangled in an attempt to land the scoring forward the team could use so badly?

5. One of the highlights last season was the chemistry that developed between Nixon and right-winger Juuso Puustinen, the personable Finn who dazzled for most of last season. If that chemistry has survived, this pair is capable of lighting it up.

6. There could be an interesting battle for one spot on defence that could go to one of three players — Joel Woznikoski, who spent most of last season with the BCHL’s Westside Warriors; Kurt Torbohm, from the junior B Revelstoke Grizzlies; or, Darcy Huisman, from the BCHL’s Prince George Spruce Kings.

7. Slovakian left-winger Ivan Rohac struggled for a lot of the season, likely because of language difficulties and the adjustment to a new culture. But there were times late in the season when he was dynamite. If he can score, it will take a lot of pressure off the offence.

8. Jimmy Bubnick, the fifth overall pick in the 2006 bantam draft, will have to play poorly not to earn a spot. A centre, he was one of the youngest players in the selection came for Canada’s U-18 team earlier this month. The Saskatoon native is, according to most people, a stud.

9. Centre Mark Hall and left-winger Shayne Wiebe are under-sized forwards who play the same pesky style. Hall finished last season here; Wiebe played with the midget AAA Brandon Wheat Kings. Will there be room on the roster for both of them?

10. There are two players on the roster — Nixon and hard-nosed defenceman Ryan Bender — who have known nothing but off-ice turmoil with this organization. They were rookies in the fall of 2003 when the missing money was discovered and the chicken feathers first hit the fan. Now they are 20-year-olds and are learning that the more things change around here, the more they stay the same. Will the off-ice circus impact their ability to be the leaders this team so badly needs?

scamperdog
08-26-2007, 11:59 PM
http://www.blazerhockey.com/feature-story/sun_pm.mp3