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View Full Version : Royals feel buzz over ‘man-child'



CdnSailor
08-28-2011, 11:04 PM
http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Royals+feel+buzz+over+child/5318649/story.html

The Victoria Royals Western Hockey League franchise, during its previous five seasons in Chilliwack as the Bruins, was more blue collar than blue chip.

Only two Bruins, Oscar Moller and Nick Holden, went to the NHL, and even they have spent more time in the AHL.

Maybe that’s why there is a rumble of excitement building in Royals rookie camp around defenceman Keegan Kanzig. Sixteen-year-olds who are six-foot-five, 225-pounds and can skate don’t come around every day.

The most famous current sporting exports out of the tiny community of Athabasca, Alta., are TSN sports anchors Jay Onrait and Bryan Mudryk. The strapping Kanzig, the Bruins/ Royals first pick in the 2010 draft of graduating bantams and taken seventh overall, could change that and put Athabasca on the map beyond just the anchor desk.

“He’s a man-child,” said Royals GM and head coach Marc Habscheid.

“With that size and strength he will pushing for a spot on the team [this season]. He’s part of the future. But it’s a process.”

It certainly is in the WHL.

In any given Royals season, fans can probably expect one or two players who may be NHL-bound, perhaps another four or five who will play other levels of pro in the AHL-ECHL or Europe, maybe another five who will go on to the university game in the CIS and the rest eventually washing out of hockey.

To have a 16-year-old as a potential for that elite first category is a good thing for any WHL team. But that player must be brought along properly and not rushed. Habscheid is a canny veteran coach and knows that well.

Kanzig towers over the other 16-year-olds in rookie camp, which ends today with scrimmages from 8 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. The real measure comes against the returning veterans during main camp Monday and Tuesday and in the intra-squad game Wednesday evening.

“I don’t feel external pressure from outside expectations, only the pressure from the expectations I place on myself,” said the poised Kanzig, who played Major Midget last season in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.

“I’m just focusing on what I do on the ice, not what other people are doing or saying.”

There are plenty of cautionary tales in the WHL of high bantam draftees not achieving potential while players who went undrafted going on to make it. Defenceman Mitch Topping, the Bruins/Royals promising first-round bantam draft pick in 2008 and taken eight overall, was overlooked this summer in his NHL draft year and subsequently traded by the Royals to the Tri City Americans in a WHL deal that netted Victoria 16-year-old winger Justin Spagrud and Tri City’s second-round bantam draft pick in 2013. The system keeps renewing itself with younger players and can leave others behind very quickly.

“Going in the first round of the bantam draft was great, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you work hard to keep yourself at the level that is expected,” said Kanzig, bronze-medallist with Alberta earlier this year in the 2011 Canada Winter Games at Halifax.

Even at 16 you begin to realize major-junior is a business and you must eventually deliver results. That’s what Kanzig, who describes himself as a “stay-at-home D-man,” aims to do over his career at the Memorial Centre.

“The rink is awesome and the city very nice,” he said.

Dad Mark is a mechanical engineer and mom Sue a homemaker, and Kanzig recalls a happy family life growing up in Athabasca as the tallest kid in his grades at school.

“I’ve always been big,” smiled Kanzig, who also played basketball and football in school.

Kanzig brings an Albertan’s love of country music to the Island but also a passion for mountain biking, the latter at least which gives him some instant Coast credibility.

But it’s on the ice, not bike, that Kanzig will be judged.