The Red Wings’ Summer Development Camp is billed as an educational experience by the Red Wings’ personnel, and the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan got Dan Cleary to explain why that is:
“It’s been going good,” said Cleary, who is thrilled to have former teammate Pavel Datsyuk on the ice working with the prospects. “It’s been great and pretty exciting to have Pavel around the kids and great to see all of our kids (prospects). The kids are enjoying it. Some of the kids are a little rusty, they haven’t been on the ice (in a while).”(But) we tell these kids it’s more of an educational week than evaluation.”
Cleary used this year’s first-round pick, forward Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, as an example.
“He’s had trouble with his skates and falling down,” Cleary said. “I told him, ‘Listen, I’m not here judging whether you can’t stand up or not. We’ve seen your body of work. (Kris) Draper (amateur scouting director) has seen him all year and our scouting staff.
“It’s most important that they take all the information they can (out of this camp). We test, but we get the results and we’ve met with a few kids and we’ll tell them basically, this is what you have to work on, this is what you are good at and give them feedback and go from there.”
