My offerings for Thursday at the World Junior Summer Showcase were somewhat limited. I posted an “arrival, and here’s how it goes in terms of schedule/games” post, and interviews with Axel Sandin Pellikka and Anton Johansson of Sweden, as well as Trey Augustine of Team USA White.
My first-day takeaways, on a team-by-team basis, were fairly straightforward:
The Swedes ran an efficient practice, emphasizing economy of motion and no wasteful spending of time, with the name-and-number-less players engaging in some fairly competitive drills that covered the fundamentals of the game, with a lot of emphasis on dynamic plays and special teams.
The Finns seemed to engage in a little more of a casual approach, sort of a, “Welcome to the U.S., here are some basic drills to shake off the jet lag” before really getting into puck possession drills and working on sorting out defensive coverage, transitions and retrievals.
The Americans, under University of Denver coach David Carle, really took things to another level, for both Team USA White and Team USA Blue. Right off the bat, the teams were split into two units which engaged in “battle drills” off the bat, with stick and body checking fully engaged, and things got more complicated from there. The Americans really busted their humps from stem to stern of their 1-hour practices in a way that the elegantly efficient Swedes and slightly slow-starting Finns did not.
Because of the familiarity that the players have with each other from playing on the Under-17 and Under-18 NTDP teams, playing at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, the World Under-17 Challenge and World Junior Championship, there was no, “Getting to know you” acclimation period:
It was, “Here are the systems of play that you’re accustomed to from participating in our program, and here is the level of motherfarking intensity that we are going to expect from you over the next EIGHT STRAIGHT DAYS because it is a privilege to be here!”
Individually, it’s hard to take a practice and breathe new life into player observations after taking part in the Red Wings’ Summer Development Camp, but I’ll go with some short strokes and continue from there:
Axel Sandin Pellikka: Listed at 5’11” and 182 pounds, I’d say that Axel has grown an inch over the past couple of months. He’s taller than me, and I’m six feet even on a good day. Pellikka didn’t look like he’d taken the Wings’ development camp advice to heart as much as he looked like a player who’d been spending his offseason working with an SHL team in order to secure a full-time position on Skelleftea AIK’s blueline.
On the ice, there are obvious parallels between Sandin Pellikka and Brian Rafalski, in terms of their posture and their overall skill sets. He’s not particularly large, but ASP’s stick is always available for passes and ready to unleash an array of right-shooting shots from the blueline, usually of the snap or wrist variety, though he’s willing to wind up and rip a slapper as well. He’s one of those classic stick-on-the-ice players, using his heads-up mobility and ease of positioning to prepare himself to give and take pucks to facilitate possession in the offensive zone.
There’s definitely still room to grow in terms of his physical strength, his transition play, and his overall defense. He’s a lot better at gapping up on opponents than he’s given credit for, and he sorts out his options quickly, but I think that size and strength are going to be question marks for him until his commitment to defending answers those questions.
All of that being said, ASP is all of 18 years old, a 2023 1st round pick, and he’s already challenging for a full-time spot on a men’s league team, which is impressive. The holes in his game and his frame should fill out over time, and his skating and ever-ready stick provide a platform for an offensive defenseman to constantly be in the mix for catalyzing his team’s attack.
Anton Johansson: Johansson is a year older at 19, and the Leksands IF defenseman comes from a hockey family. His brother Simon plays in the Minnesota Wild’s system as a defenseman, younger brother Victor is a defenseman for Leksands’ Under-18 team, and the brothers’ dad, was a long-time professional defenseman in Sweden who is now Leksands IF’s general manager.
So Anton gets a lot of hockey talk at home. And the 6’4,” 194-pound defenseman is definitely in the process of becoming a full-time pro. I was impressed by his overall mobility given his gangly frame, and his willingness to kick pucks to his stick and use his elbows and knees to his advantage, essentially maximizing the surface area of what is already a large body in order to block down pucks and even win physical battles as he twists and turns from forward and lateral to backward skating.
He’s not an edge-work-maestro like ASP, but Johansson uses his stick well, and while we weren’t able to see much in the way of physical play on Thursday, I’m going to be interested to see how he keeps up against the fleet-footed Americans and blazingly-fast Finns.
Trey Augustine: At a USA Hockey-listed 6’1″ and 183 pounds, Augustine just isn’t “big” by today’s goaltending standards, especially when standing next to 6’3″ teammate Tyler Muszelik, but Augustine is just sound and steady in a way that’s reminiscent of–minus the scorpion saves, anyway–Jonathan Quick.
When he stands up absent a shot, he stands up a lot, but when he’s in his stance, it’s compact, square, and rock-solid. He’s got a glove that’s held a little higher up than his blocker, and it’s an active glove, rarely giving out pop-out rebounds, and he’s more willing to turn over his glove to grab loose pucks than he is to drop his stick in traffic to make blocker-hand saves.
Augustine kicks out pucks to corners and lower-danger areas, and while his wingspan was something of a different look when compared to, say, 6’6″ Sebastian Cossa during development camp, the incoming Michigan State University freshman (who is already up in East Lansing, training with his new teammates) gets the job done by being square and upright in his butterfly.
He’s got a very sound, active butterfly stance, with very quick toes and upper thigh saves to equal his speedy blocker and glove, his stick is active without being particularly flourishing, and he wears his leg pads high up on his skates, with his “boot channel” basically flat as the bottoms of his pads sit over his skate laces.
I find it a little interesting that Augustine uses one brand of pads (True) and different glove and blocker models (Vaughn V10’s), because my experience is that different brands of pads tend to give out different kinds of rebounds as their materials are ever-so-slightly different in terms of the plastics, foams and synthetic leather (as well as how the pads are put together), so I may ask him about that as the week progresses.
As you know by now, I’m trying to get back on my blogging feet after 9 months spent taking care of my aunt as she went through the adventures of falling down the stairs, getting diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and then ulcerative colitis, so I am “passing around the collection plate” to ensure that I at least get to cover my gas money and “out food” for the balance of the next eight days.
Longer-term, the server bills to Bluehost and Jetpack are due at the end of August, and the only way I’m headed up to Traverse City is if we can afford to bring the 81-year-old aunt with me, so, as I said a couple of days ago, here we go:
If you’re are willing or able to lend a fundraising assist, you can use PayPal at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport, Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2, Giftly by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com. And you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check. I’m also on Cash App under “georgeums” (an old nickname).
