‘Why they bought the rink’

I’m jealous. Michigan Hockey’s Michael Caples got to take in last week’s Power Edge Pro camp at USA Hockey Arena, and Caples found that the lineup yielded a “this is why we do it” moment, and that moment was facilitated in part by Dylan Larkin:

The USA Hockey National Team Development Program hosted a training camp at their home in Plymouth last week, run by Power Edge Pro. What started as a conversation between Larkin and NTDP assistant director of player personnel turned into the NTDP’s past, present and future all converging on USA Hockey Arena for three days of training in preparation for the upcoming season.

“Three years ago, when USA Hockey bought the arena, it’s obviously the home of the NTDP, but they wanted it to be a little open door and the headquarters for American players, and we’ve always talked about doing some type of camp since I’ve been here,” [assistant director of player personnel Rod] Braceful said. “Actually, it ended up being a little bit of networking, we had a lunch with Larkin, talked about having a pro camp, and then we said, you know what, we can get some of our incoming guys and our returnees who are here locally, get them in a group and we made a prospective group, too.

“We want to show them the building, give the players resources – we’re here in a hockey hotbed, and it’s one of those things where it’s a good thing for the guys to gear up here in August and get ready.”

In the pro group, NTDP alums Larkin, Werenski, Cam Fowler, JT Compher, Riley Barber and Austin Czarnik were joined by fellow pros Alex DeBrincat, Jeff Petry, Jordan Oesterle, Sheldon Dries, Frans Nielsen, Gustav Nyquist, Dominic Turgeon, David Pope, Evgeny Svechnikov and Jack Kopacka for the unique on-ice training.

Continued (great read)

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.