Prospect camp -- Day 5

I spoke briefly to Kenny McCudden, the Wolves skating and skills coach who led drills today, and asked if he thought the players are tired at this point. He said no. And I don't get the feeling by watching or talking to them that they are either. I think the powers that be are going slightly easier on them this year, and Artie Kulda agreed that it was more fun this year.

Me on the other hand, I'm exhausted. So here are just a few photos for now and I'll have to write more later.

Kenny McCudden.

Paul Postma. Notice the white on his nose, that's a tape bandage. He took a stick to the face on Friday morning. His locker room neighbor Kulda tried to tell me Postma got in a bar fight. If you were picking teams for a bar fight, this mild-mannered skinny guy would be the last guy picked. Anyway, it looked really bad that day, but it's already much better. No stitches and it's not broken. He said it's really sore though.

Oh one funny thing. I was asking Postma what his body fat measurement in camp was. Just at that moment, Strength and Conditioning Coach Ray Bear walked by in the background and yelled, "lie!" as a suggestion for answering. Postma tried it "umm, 26%" but then said he couldn't remember, but it was close to what's been measured before for him, like 6 or 7%.

Speaking of Kulda, something needs to be revisited. I said on the first day that Bogosian hit him in the opening skate-around. That's what I thought I saw, and I checked with John Anderson and that's what he thought he saw too. But today I asked Kulda if anything funny happened in camp, since he's usually good for stuff like this, and he mentioned that he stepped on a puck and fell five minutes into camp. He said everyone keeps talking about Bogosian hitting him, but it was a puck. Funny. The circumstantial evidence was all against Bogosian -- he had just passed Kulda and was looking back laughing. Falling is funny whether you made it happen or not I guess.

Will O'Neill recovering from the mountains (timed skating drills). He had the worst time in his five-player group. Bogosian won that heat handily.

By the way, I asked John Anderson what his preferred term for this drill is, and he said that we'll continue using Bob Hartley's term of mountain (others call them Herbies for Herb Brooks).

Machacek, Holzapfel and Esposito have a conference.

Zach Bogosian.

Chris Carrozzi sticking out his tongue as he stretches.

Invitees Ryan Daniels looking this way, and Dan Rosen looking away.

Oh and I asked Stoesz about his shootout goal the other day, in which he buried a shot after missing the puck on pickup at center. "What are you talking about?" he smiled. "I do that all the time." What happened was mental. Two shooters prior, Angelo Esposito was recalling a shootout he had this year in which he missed on the pick-up and then fired high. Stoesz was thinking to himself 'don't miss the puck, don't miss the puck,' and then promptly missed the puck.