SCRIMMAGE SPICES UP DEVELOPMENT CAMP
Leafs hopefuls take on undrafted free agents in lively practice game matchup
It won’t be a hockey rivalry quite intense enough to divide families or drive TV ratings, but it will make July a lot more compelling in these parts.
The Maple Leafs capped their development camp by having draft picks play against a group of free agents, providing some spice on the ice. The tryouts, who’ve been practising separately the past few days, triumphed 6-3 on Tuesday, with the benefit of three games in their own milieu and desire to show up their highly publicized opponents.
“We have a lot to prove,” said undersized right winger Jake Tortora, who had a hat trick after doing likewise Monday in a free agents game. “They were a great team and we came out flying. It was good for me to score, but if feels way better to get the win.”
The draftees’ lineup included this year’s No. 1, defenceman Timothy Liljegren, and a blue line wall of Eemeli Rasanen, Fedor Gordeev, Keaton Middleton and Nicolas Mattinen. Up front, there was 130-point WHL scorer Adam Brooks and other juniors of note, J.J. Piccinich, Martins Dzierkals and Vladimir Bobylev.
Leaf player personnel staff in the stands at the MasterCard Centre were not hiding from club president Brendan Shanahan after the game. They had invited the 31 extras to camp for this very reason: find some diamonds in the rough who’d eluded them and give their home grown players a scrappy foe for a couple of games,
Brooks, himself twice ignored on draft day, knew exactly what was fuelling the opposition.
“Being passed over, you’re that much more motivated to get out there and work against guys who were picked. They beat us all over the ice so we have to be way better (in Game 2 Wednesday).”
The picks were kept strictly on a practice schedule until Tuesday, getting a lion’s share of attention from the coaches in detailed drills. That, however, meant their ‘A’ game was somewhere between B and C on Tuesday morning.
“I got a bit gassed in the first couple of shifts,” admitted Liljegren, the 17th overall pick in June. “But after a while you are starting to get the feeling and it’s fun. I got a couple of good passes, a couple of shots and I should’ve scored a couple.”
Piccinich, a 2014 selection who racked up 72 points in his final year with the London Knights, thought it was beneficial to get spanked by the underdogs.
“If you get a little outside your comfort zone, that’s a good thing. A lot of us haven’t played organized hockey in a bit. That’s not an excuse, they were able to tilt the ice and do a good job, but the important thing is to implement the tactical stuff you’ve been learning here all week.”
BIG TREE D
The camp invites began the game staring at a defence that included Rasanen (6-feet-7), Gordeev (6-6), Middleton (6-6), Mattinen (6-5) and J.D. Greenway (6-4).
“For sure we have a force back there,” said Gordeev. “We’re a big group and that helps out a lot. (But) we took them lighter than we should have.”
Middleton crunched Tortora early in the game, while Gordeev got a good belt in on Kristian Pospisil, before the line of he, Tortora and Austin Rueschhoff blew the game open.
“To be honest, I’m not usually a guy who uses my body,” said Gordeev, a 2017 pick born in Russia and raised in Toronto. “But I definitely interpreted (that approach must change). I’m a big guy, that’s what I have to do.”
FLY LIKE AN EAGLE
If the Leafs or any other NHL team want Tortora, the 17-yearold insists he’ll be spending this coming season at Boston College as a freshman with the Eagles.
“They have a lot of small forwards there,” said Tortora, who is listed at 5-foot-8. “Jerry York is a great coach and they’ve been generating small forwards such as Johnny Gaudreau, Nathan Gerbe and the Giontas (Brian and Stephen). We talked a lot. So I think I could fit in there. I knew those guys as players and I wanted to go there.
“This (camp) gains a lot of confidence for me.”