MARYLANDHEIGHTS, Mo. — It’s very uncommon for the opening of training campto showcase so many of the NHL players in one group and so many ofthe prospects in the other.
Normally,players are split up, mixed and matched until camp gets whittled downto the end and those that are going to make the opening night roster.
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Butwith training camp this year lasting less than two weeks, and as St. Louis Blues coach Jim Montgomery said, “four preseason games and wehave fivepractices,” there is no time for formalities with the regularseason opener just 15 days away and the first preseason game on Saturday against the Dallas Stars.
TheBlues opened camp Thursday at Centene Community Ice Center with twogroups, and it was clear which was more established than the other:
TheBlues (37-33-12 last season) are not opening camp on this day lookingto get in a month’s worth of work. They’re banking that playersare all in shape, they’re all in hockey sense and that they’reall beyond the pond hockey days.
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Thursday’sopening drills were more designed for things they would be doing acouple weeks into camp, or even on the cusp of the season opening.
“Bythe end of our fourth exhibition game, all we have is four games andwe have five practices. The feeling-out process that you used to havein camp is gone,” Montgomerysaid.”Guys have to be on their toes, they’ve got to be ready, theyhave to push each other, and we’re trying to put the lines that wethink might have a chance to start game one together right away.
“Ourobjectivetoday was working on being a much harder team offensively getting tothe blue paint. We scored seven goals in the scrimmage. That Ithought was very successful. I thought we were creating more chaos. Ithought the energy and the pace was pretty good. I thought guys (had)second and third effort. We started with 1-on-1 battles and rightaway, guys were digging in and they were into it and they werepushing each other to be better. I thought it was a very productiveDay 1.”
Andthat’s why Group A pretty much resembled what a lineup will looklike on opening night against the Stars in Dallas on Oct. 2.
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“Wellwith my thinking, the Thomas line speaks for itself the way theyfinished and they scored two goals out there today, so they picked upkind of where they left off; they looked really good,” Montgomerysaid.”The second line, McTavish for us is a top-six player, McMichaelhas played in the middle six his entire career and Buchy has playedpretty much. So let’s put those three together, see what kind ofchemistry we have today. I thought they did some good thingsoffensively. Defensively, we haven’t touched a thing yet. They gotscored against, but we still haven’t worked on our D-zone coverageyet because just first day of camp. Third line that we had with theDvorsky line, I didn’t really notice, I wasn’t coaching thatteam. I didn’t see an impact in the game. Fourth line looked reallygood. ‘Torpo’ was flying, ‘Sutes’ is always supporting andthis Johnston, you can see how smart a player he is and very vocal onthe bench.
“Acouple of the D-pair that stood out for me. Fowler and the Carlo pairwere excellent, poise, gaps were really good and I thought Lindsteinand Parayko did a really good job on my bench as well.”
Thiswasn’t an off-season where Montgomery and the coaching staff couldplan out this longer, drawn-out training camp. It was more compactedand challenging to fit many things into a smaller window.
“There’sa combination of things that influence the way it was. It was shoringup what we didn’t think were strengths that should be strengths,being hard at the offensive blue paint, being hard at the defensiveblue paint,” Montgomerysaid.”You’ll see that tomorrow. Committing battles in practices andcompetition in those areas was important for us to get to those areasand create the habits that we need. You saw a lot of driving backposts today, you saw a lot of speed trying to get at the net. That’swhy we were doing all those 3-on-1s, 3-on-2s. And then the otherthing is the shortened … like I said, we’ve got four games, fivepractices. That’s nine times on the ice together before we have ourteam meeting before we have three practices before we play our firstgame at Dallas. So there’s no time to waste. Once we get past thisCBA three-hour rule, we’re going to start having double videosessions. It’s going to be more like NFL training. Those are thingsthat we’ve worked on so that we can be prepared in a three-weekcamp and a 13-day camp.”
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Onenoticeable omission: the VO2 fitness testing that, well, nobody caresto do but know it was always a must.
“Thecoaches were really happy,” Montgomerysaid laughing.”Thank God I didn’t have to do the VO2 max this year. You wouldlike to have fitness testing just because … these athletes are sowell-conditioned now. It’s not an issue now like it was in the 70swhere camp was six weeks long so you can get in shape to start theseason. Now they have their own nutritionists, strength andconditioning coaches, they have speed and acceleration coaches, sothey’re well-prepared. The thing is mentally, what you like abouthaving testing is the guys know they’ve got to come and they takegreat pride in it, so they want to do well on the test to showeveryone I’m ready to go. We don’t have that option, but the icespeaks for itself. Didn’t see a lot of guys hovering over sticks.That was not an easy practice. First day of camp, there’s nervesthat are going because everybody wants to show well. So you usuallycan tell just by skating, and you’ll see a bag skate at the end ofpractice tomorrow that will kind of try and look for that.”
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