Prospects make most of chance to show what they can do

It’s called an NHL development camp, not an evaluation camp, so nobody was being graded over the four days the Edmonton Oilers brought in 24 of their draft picks or free-agent signees this week but here’s what we know.

Kailer Yamamoto can really

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dangle.

Kirill Maksimov knows where

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the net is.

Stuart Skinner makes lots of

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stops.

Cooper Marody finds people in

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traffic.

Evan Bouchard can bomb the

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puck.

And George McPhee’s boy Graham

■ has a motor that keeps on running.

But a development camp is just a chance to see players go against their peers, full-out, no coasting. It’s an appetizer to main camp, and the big boys.

“This an educational get-toknow process for us and where the players get to know themselves. We only had 24 players but the pace stayed up and the cream rose to the top,” said Scott Howson, the Oilers VP of player development.

“There’s always certain guys who catch your eye and we had some good first looks.

“It’s one snapshot for a week in the summer. Some kids are more ready, the smaller kids have an advantage, some are in different places in their training. You’re not evaluating. The evaluation comes in September at the rookie camp.”

“The college players like McPhee (Boston College), Vinnie Desharnais (Providence College), we only get them once a year,” said Howson, who knows they have to pay their own way to the development camp so they don’t contravene NCAA rules.

The 19-year-old Niagara Icedogs winger Maksimov, a 2017 fifthround pick in 2017, had 34 goals last year. He scored both goals for the Blue team in the 4-2 Billy Moores Cup victory as Yamamoto scored twice and set up Bouchard for another and McPhee also scored.

The 6-foot-2, 192-pound winger is going back to junior, but he might be a draft steal.

“Kirill has a really good shot. You saw that with his second goal today where he was falling away from the net and shot back, across the grain and scored. You can’t teach that,” Howson said. “I thought he’d get 45 goals last year but slowed down at the end and started getting more assists (46 on the season). We’d expect he’d be 45 to 50 goals in junior this season.

“Marody has great anticipation, great vision, has the puck a lot in the scrimmages we had. He’s got elite hockey IQ and he has to adapt to the speed of pro. He seemed to do that well in Bakersfield at the end of last year.”

Marody is a huge fan of Vancouver Canucks’ top draft pick, defenceman Quinn Hughes.

“I think he can win the Norris Trophy some day. He’s one of the best skaters in the world. He’s not the biggest player as people have questioned but he’s got the head (for the game). He outsmarts guys way bigger than him, stick and body-positioning. I think he’s got a real shot at making Vancouver right away,” he said.

Forward J.D. Dudek, the senior at Boston College who was part of the Patrick Maroon trade deadline deal with New Jersey, has been at Devils’ development camp twice and now once with the Oilers.

“The first year I was drafted, Lou Lamoriello was there and he had his way of running the camp, then (Ray) Shero took over and coincidentally both (of their) sons were my roommates,” he said.

Dudek, Graham McPhee and Finnish draft centre Aapeli Rasanen, who didn’t make the trip from Europe, are all teammates at Boston College. They’ll be getting sniper Oliver Wahlstrom, the kid the Oilers were debating taking rather than Evan Bouchard at the No. 10 pick at the draft, this fall.