Stanley hopes to stand tall for Canadian junior squad

Logan Stanley has not played a shift in the world junior hockey championship, yet he has memories of the event he will cherish for the rest of his life.

The Winnipeg Jets prospect is among 11 defencemen competing for a coveted job with Canada’s junior team this week at the selection camp at the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines, Ont.

Four will be told they will not be required for the 2018 world junior in Buffalo, starting Dec. 26 when Canada meets Finland at the KeyBank Center.

It appears to be a safe bet that returnees Kale Clague, Jake Bean and Dante Fabbro, as well as Victor Mete, sent to camp by the Montreal Canadiens, have the top four spots locked up.

Not that Stanley — a member of the Memorial Cup-champion Windsor Spitfires, who was traded to his hometown Kitchener Rangers during the summer — will need extra motivation, but there is some if it’s needed.

In late 2008, when he was 10 years old, Stanley — who was born in Kitchener and raised in Waterloo — and his minor hockey teammates headed to Ottawa for a tournament during the Christmas break.

They caught the Canada-Kazakhstan game at the 2009 world junior, won 15-0 by Canada, and happened to be staying in the same hotel as the Canadian juniors, a team that featured future NHL stars such as John Tavares, P.K. Subban and Alex Pietrangelo and was coached by Pat Quinn.

A chance meeting with Quinn, who died in 2014, left a mark.

“We were running around playing mini sticks at the hotel and he stopped to talk to us, probably for 15 minutes,” Stanley said on Wednesday. “He took that time out of his day, signed all of our jerseys. We got a picture with him that my mom still has somewhere in an album.

“You think back and when someone of that stature does something like that … he could have walked by and not taken the time. All of us here could do the same thing for some young kids who are watching or will be at the tournament. Definitely something you can learn from.”

If he makes the team and you happen to run into the Canadian junior team in Buffalo, Stanley will be the player towering over everyone else. At 6-foot-7, 231 pounds, the 19-year-old is the biggest skater in camp.

Chosen 18th overall by the Jets in the 2016 draft, Stanley arrived at camp with the idea that his size will work in his favour.

“For sure,” Stanley said. “I think my feet and my skating are good enough to play with anyone here. I have to use my size and my strength to dominate in the D zone.

“Being good defensively, moving pucks quickly, penalty-killing well, blocking shots, being hard to play against in my own end. All of it is important.”

The past seven hockey months have been hectic for Stanley. There was his recovery from knee injury in time to help the Spits win the Memorial Cup in May; in August, Stanley was traded to the Rangers, happily moving back into his parents’ home on a full-time basis.

Training camp with the Jets ended when Stanley was sent back to the Ontario Hockey League in September with the knowledge that he needed more development at the junior level before the possibility of sticking in the NHL could be realistic.

In 30 games with the Rangers, Stanley, whose first concern is playing strong defensively, has 25 points, an OHL career high.