Red Wings prospect and 2021 draft pick Sebastian Cossa split his first two games for the Edmonton Oil Kings this season, and he spoke with the Edmonton Sun’s Derek Van Diest regarding both his experiences at the Red Wings’ prospect tournament and main training camp, as well as his expectations for the upcoming season with the WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings:
“It was really good; just being around there for two weeks, being around pros for that long, I think I took away a lot things coming into the season,” Cossa said. “Just practice habits and off-ice habits I kind of took away. Just coming here, I’m prepared to use that for the whole season and keep my body feeling better and try to have a good year.”
Cossa is expected to play the bulk of the games for the Oil Kings until they lose him to the world juniors. From there, head coach Brad Lauer might manage his minutes in preparation for an expected lengthy playoff run.
“We’re likely going to lose him for 12 games for the world juniors and right now, the way our schedule is set up, you can run with a guy for a while,” Lauer said. “There is a little bit of travel and not a lot of games, so it gives us the opportunity to run with him a little bit, but we’ll see. Everything changes day by day. We do have a start plan for him that we may stick to and we may change too, as well. But we’ll probably run with it for a little while.”
The Oil Kings travel to face the Lethbridge Hurricanes on Wednesday, Swift Current Broncos on Friday and Medicine Hat Tigers on Saturday.
Cossa is comfortable with a heavy workload, particularly after playing 19 of 23 games last season. The Oil Kings gave him practically every start so NHL scouts could get a good gauge on him.
“Last year, it was a big thing for me to be consistent and coming in this year, I want to have the same attitude,” Cossa said. “I’m just taking it day by day, game by game. Every two points is really important, so I just want to come in here every night, and just worrying about the new night regardless of how I played the game before. That’s going to help a lot.”
