Canes and Coffee’s coverage of the Hurricanes Traverse City NHL prospects tourney games:
—Daily Cup of Joe today details what championship win really means for Hurricanes hockey.
Game recaps:
—Games 1 and 2 combined (vs. New York Rangers and vs. Minnesota Wild).
—Game 3 (vs. Dallas Stars).
—Championship (game 4) (vs. Detroit Red Wings).
Loading ...
Questions for comments below:
–Which Hurricanes prospect most impressed relative to your expectations heading into the Traverse City tourney?
–Which Hurricanes prospects have a chance to ride momentum from Traverse City into the NHL training camp and fight for an opening night NHL roster spot?
–Of the prospects drafted in the later rounds who showed in Traverse City that he has a chance to beat the odds and one day play in the NHL?
Go Canes!
Janne Kuokkanen was beyond my expectations. He was always involved and creating problems for the other teams.
Opening night NHL roster spot – several have a good chance:
Haydn Fleury
Roland McKeown
Sergey Tolchinsky
Julien Gauthier
Valentin Zykov
later rounds draft: I am sure many will agree, Noah Carroll.
I was also very impressed with Kuokkanen. His ability to drive play into the offensive zone was not fairly rewarded on the score sheet.
Yup, my 3 were:
McKeown
Kuokkanen
Wallmark
McKeown just owned the blueline from a “making the right play” perspective. Kuokkanen drove offense every time he was on the ice but didn’t sacrifice his solid defensive game.
Wallmark was the offensive version of McKeown; just made smart, effective plays.
Yah, he was very noticeable any time he was on the ice, score sheet or not. This team really dominated and were noticeably better then the competition. Many stood out. charlestoncane is right, hard to pick just a couple. Contributions all over the place.
I was going to put Kuokkanen on my Opening night NHL roster spot potential but thought he might be too young yet for the Canes staff to do that.
A lot of the Canes prospects either just weren’t able to get rewarded on the stat sheets even with solid play or were very solid in areas that never show up on the stat sheets. That made it really hard to select three (McKeown was an easy pick, but after that it was more difficult). I was extremely impressed with the team as a whole. While not everyone from this team is going to make it in the NHL, these results make it a lot easier to see the upward trajectory that the organization is going.
I agree it’s harder to pick a forward of the bunch as several of our FWD players are deserving of a top 3 star (as noted in the polls above). My nod goes to McKeown who held the back end in-check after Fleury went down, and did so in an otherwise run and gun tournament. This kid really is future captain material.
Bean is my second choice for his slick puck moving skills.
Tolchinsky is my 3rd star for timely goals and pure speed in the neutral zone. Bottom line this tourney really shows we have potent defense in addition to the offense.
And yes, thank you redwings.com for streaming the show! We go home with the prospects version of the Cup, Ulf proves he could be the perfect fit for coaching and challenging our young guys, while PK is beaming in his glory waiting for his pal Illitch to offer congrats.