Heavy on D, quick up front: Growlers taking shape
Ryane Clowe says it’s easy to pick out the Newfoundland Growlers’ defencemen.
“The heavy guys with beards,” grinned the Growlers’ head coach.
Granted, it’s a generalization. Not all of the D-men for the ECHL expansion team have put away their razors and there are forwards — St. John’s native Zach O’brien, for example — who have noticeable facial hair.
But the rearguards are tall. Seven of the eight in camp are 6-2 and above, with 6-4 Kristans Rubins leading the way, and there is bulk, with three — Bonavista’s Adam Pardy, Alex Gudbranson and tryout Andrew Darrigo — each approaching 230 pounds on the scale.
Their size on the blueline is accentuated by the situation up front, where nine forwards are listed (with emphasis on the “listed”) at six feet and below. Things have changed a little over the past few days with the official assignment of 6-2 Kristian Pospisil and especially with the arrival of 6-3, 220-pound Maxim Mizyurin, but overall, the hallmark for the Growlers forwards is quickness.
“We have speed up front and that’s where you can apply pressure and get that attacking mindset that we want,” said Clowe, whose new charges played their first-ever preseason game Thursday night against the Brampton Beast in Stephenville.
Although this is a brand-new team, Clowe isn’t focusing so much on Xs and Os because most of the players have been well-drilled in that regard, whether at the rookie camp of the Toronto Maple Leafs, or the Leafs’ main camp, or the training camp of the AHL’S Toronto Marlies.
“That stuff should be seamless from the Leafs to the Marlies to us,” said Clowe. “A lot of these guys have been through those camps and have gone over our structured stuff, the systems. And we’re still touching on that.
“Plus, while every coach has little tweaks of their own, what the Leafs have was actually very much what I had in mind when I took this job.
“So now, I’m looking for more of an identity, of how we’re going to play and I believe that should be tenacious, relentless, hunting pucks, retrieving pucks.
“At the end of the day, you can have all the structure you want, but you have to be able to play with pace, play with a relentless attitude.”
The Growlers have only a week to get down to the Echlmandated 20-man active roster before they hit the ice for the season-opener next Friday at Mile One Centre against the Florida Everblades.
So Clowe and assistant coach John Snowden are using a threegame preseason series against the Beast — the teams also play tonight in Deer Lake and Sunday afternoon in Clarenville — to carve out a lineup.
“Who fits where, who plays with who, and we have guys on tryouts as well, so that means other decisions,” said Clowe, who says his early trainingcamp concentration has been about finding pairs of forwards who work together as opposed to lines.
In part, that’s because ECHL teams only dress 18 players for games, meaning there are usually just 10 forwards on the game card, which can result in some considerable line juggling.
“But I think I came to camp having a pretty good read on most of these guys,” said Clowe. “I’ve seen some as far back as the rookie tournament all the way through the Leafs and Marlies camps.
“I can tell you our forwards are quick. We have speed up front. We’ll want to get the puck to them as quick as we can and let them go.”
They are also young, at least when it comes to professional experience. At 26 and with five years in the AHL and ECHL, O’brien easily qualifies as the veteran of a group of centres and wingers that otherwise consists of rookies and secondyear pros.
Not that they are ancient on defence. There’s the 34-year-old Pardy, but everyone else on the back end is at least eight years younger than that.
The difference — perhaps what their beards indicate more than anything — between the defencemen and the forwards is experience. Pardy has played more than 340 NHL games. Melindy, Gudbranson and Steffan Leblanc all have put in considerable time in the AHL.
Clowe had been anxious to see how those young forwards and those fairly seasoned defencemen mesh, how it all comes together.
In his days as a junior in the QMJHL, he’d already have played a month’s worth of contests by this point. When he was in the AHL and NHL, the last two as an assistant coach with the New Jersey Devils, his teams would have already seen considerable game action. To have to wait until early October for a first exhibition game, for some real competition, is utterly foreign to him.
“It’s been strange starting late,” he said. “We’re at the point, where it’s, ‘Come on, let’s go.’”