The future is here.
The CanElson Drilling Estevan Bruins are holding their annual spring prospects camp this weekend at Affinity Place. The camp will feature a mixture of all of the team's top prospects including SJHL draft picks, local players, American scouted prospects and list additions. The intention of these kids will be to impress the Bruins' coaching staff and lock onto a future roster spot.
“We're going to start (today),” said Chris Lewgood, head coach and general manager of the Bruins. “We're going to do some off-ice testing. I'll run them through four or five different testing stations not so much to compare where they're at, but to give us a database that we could continue to measure against to see their growth over the years. It lends us an idea of what their off-ice commitment is like. And then we're going to have a team practice on Friday and then on Saturday and Sunday we'll have some scrimmages.”
Lewgood said many of the kids who will be participating in the camp are players the club has seen before at their fall camp and even last spring. He said a some of these players will have even suited up for the Bruins at some point this season such as defenceman Jake Heerspink, who played in three regular season games for the Black and Gold in 2015-16 and three playoff games.
The 2016-17 version of the team will be younger than the squad that competed this year due to 11 graduating players coming off the roster because of age or school commitments. As Bruins' 2015-16 rookies Kaelan Holt, Zach Goberis, Zach Paxman, Jake Fletcher and Nathan Alalouf proved, having a good spring camp means they could be back with the team in late-September.
“There is going to be some player movement between now and then too and we know we've got to keep doing what we do here every year, reload and set ourselves up for next year,” said Lewgood. “The guys who leave the best impression here are the guys we'll give a good opportunity to.”
