Oliver > IKEA

In the middle of a long summer of hockey drought, there is a small oasis.  Ladies and Gentlemen, prospect camp.

It was a bit more exciting in previous years because we tended to go with young players on the Coyotes so the kids you were watching in July gave you a peek at the players you could be seeing all year.  That’s not really who we are anymore.  But it is still amazing.

My eyes popped open at 5am like a kid on Christmas.  7/9/10 is known as OLIVER EKMAN-LARSSON DAY!

Oli is excite. ME TOO!

Supposedly there were 21 other players there.  I think I saw some other dudes in jerseys, but HOLY CRAP OLIVER IS HERE!  It started out a bit lackluster.  I don’t know if he was jetlagged, or hadn’t skated in a while, or I’m mental and have completely unrealistic expectations for a 19 year old…… but practice started out a bit slow for Oliver.  He showed some frustration and I got nervous.  ZOMG WHAT IF HE SUCKS?!!?!?!?!?

Hahahhah Oliver you almost fooled me, you're a stud!

He’s such a smooth skater.  I know skaters are smooth, but it’s sick just to watch him skate.  His first couple of strides are powerful and he can kick it into gear and get speed up before the other dudes know what is going on.  He had a nice goal to go with some solid defending.  He kinda took out one of the fowards and it felt pretty natural yelling for him.  MAKE IT HAPPEN GMDM!

Oliver brought his friend from Sweden, our new draft pick Oscar Lindberg.  His name is Oscar the Grouch.

This dude is as frowny as Oli is smiley

Why you hafta be so serious?  Iz game!  Haz fun!  No?  Ok.

I didn’t pay that much attention and he didn’t stick out to me.

No wonder you're frowny, Oliver steals the spotlight!

Who did stand out?

Chris Brown:

Hard to miss this sucker

Ok his hair doesn’t look like that anymore BUT HOW COULD I NOT USE THAT WONDERFUL EXAMPLE OF OLD LADY HAIR ON A YOUNG MAN?  Chris seems bigger this year and although his puck handling started out sketchy, it got better as the practice went on.  He is a rough dude.  Not like fighting rough, but he loved to crash the net and hang out.  He either had kickass shots or hit the glass with them.  Feast or famine baby!

Chris Brown minus the hair plus a kid

Louie Domingue:

A goalie Amy?  YOU HATE GOALIES!  This is true folks, but this one has a lil sumpin sumpin.

Why you hafta put that goalie mask on? Oh yeah, pucks flying at face.

The goalies did a good job putting the skaters on lockdown during a “score a goal or skate lines” drill.  Mean goalies!  The skaters were tired!  Domingue I think impressed me because I had no idea what to expect because we took him so late in the draft.  I will keep an eye on him the next two days and see what he is all about. All I know now is that he is man enough to rock the pink:

MANLY!

Blair Riley:  I totally call this dude Riley Blair and not on purpose.  He’s ok just being Riley right?  Anyways, this free agent got an invite to see if we maybe want to throw him some type of contract for San Antonio or Las Vegas.  He’s a strapping lad and is kinda power forwardish, which made him stand out from the somewhat scrawny fowards we have.

In 40 games for Ferris State, he had 38 points from 18 goals and 20 assists.  He also had 165 penalty minutes, so I wouldn’t talk about how hot his Mom is if I were you.  Speaking of his family, they are in realty and Riley (damnit!), I mean Blair works with them.  Check out this slick headshot:

I would buy my house from this dude and hire him for in-home security

There were a ton of people at camp today and it was good to see fans!  There was this wonderful Douche Overlord behind me who kept talking about “oh he has no discipline”  ”what we need to do is go in this direction”.  Oh really?  WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME?  OUR FRANCHISE ALMOST FOLDED AND YOU HAD ALL THE ANSWERS ALL THIS TIME!  Dude you are not GMDM, you are definitely more Sutter.

Tomorrow (Saturday) camp is from 7:30am to about 9am.  We will see who the diehard fans are then!