Veteran virtue
Nicolas Blanchard believes young IceCaps squad can benefit from his experience, leadership
At 28, most people are just getting their working careers in gear.
Nicolas Blanchard is trying to keep his going.
Blanchard is in the St. John’s IceCaps’ training camp on a tryout, looking to remain with the team he played for last season, when it was the farm club of the Winnipeg Jets.
As of Friday, there was no word on a contract, but there have what might be seen as positive signs. Blanchard attended the main camp of the Montreal Canadiens, the IceCaps’ new parent team, and on Thursday night in Stephenville, where the IceCaps opened their 2015 American Hockey League pre-season schedule against the Toronto Marlies, he was wearing an assistant captain’s ‘A.’
“I think it shows the coach (Sylvain Lefebvre) believes I can be a leader in the room,” said Blanchard
“For me, that’s the main thing … that I have trust from the coach. That doesn’t hurt obviously, but (contract-wise), I don’t think it means anything really other than I’m being shown some respect, but I appreciate it.”
Blanchard is a well-respected player in the AHL — logging nearly 550 games in the league with the Albany River Rats, Charlotte Checkers and IceCaps. He also had the ‘Crash Davis’ bigleague experience (“Yeah, I was in The Show”), having played nine games with the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes in 2012-13.
He’s a steady up-and-down the boards left winger who doesn’t provide a tonne of offence — his 14 goals with Albany in 2009-10 made for his best showing in eight AHL seasons — but Blanchard is dependable defensively and provides some middleweight toughness, with an annual average of a little more than 100 penalty minutes and about a dozen scraps.
And he carries that reputation of being ‘good in the room’ … a leader, albeit not a loud one.
Still, that resume wasn’t enough for him to secure guaranteed work over the off-season. AHL teams are limited in the number of veteran players (those with more than 260 AHL, NHL and European elite league games) they can put in the lineup each night, and few these days fill their entire veteran quota.
“I had a couple of offers overseas, but I want to stay in the AHL a bit longer.
“It’s been five years that I’ve been (an official) veteran in this league and it’s becoming tougher and tougher for guys like that to get a contract,” said Blanchard, whose tryout invitation from the Canadiens came only a week before their training camp.
“The league is getting younger, but teams need those veterans. If you look at the teams that have won (the Calder Cup), Manchester last year, Grand Rapids the year before, they had those kinds of players.”
The native of Granby, Que., is easily the senior pro in camp; three-and-a-half years older than the next on the age list — captain Gabriel Dumont. That means everybody on these IceCaps is young to Blanchard.
“Yes, but it’s very exciting with this team,” he said. “There is something special here. It’s young, but I have never seen that much young talent … and there is character there, too.
“When I got the call (to go to Montreal’s camp), I was really, really happy to wear the Canadiens jersey for the first time.
“Now my dream is to stay here and be a winner with these guys.”