Red Wings Training Camp

[jonwings]

I am going to Traverse City next weekend for Wings training camp. Tickets and hotel areall bought and paid for. The thing is I need something more me and the lady to do Saturday afternoon since training camp stuff ends around 1:30 in the afternoon..

Anyone of you guys been there before and some ideas for cool stuff to go do? If I do not hear anything I'm going to be grabbing all the brochures in the hotel lobby on Friday night.

If I kind out and cool inside info, I'll be sure to pass it along.

[jonwings]

My hotel is apparently right across the street from one of the park/beach areas so we will probably check that out. According to the magazine Traverse City sent us, there looks to be a couple microbreweries that I am looking forward to checking out.

I'll be going to one of the one of the Red Wings games here in Chicago (Oct 25). It will probably be the only one I go to because of the increased ticket prices and the fact that the Red Wing games are now "premium games" and cost even more to go to.

I will be going to quite a few Chicago Steel games this year. The Steel are home to one Max Nicastro who was drafted by the Wings this past summer. I'm volunteering as an off ice official for a few games so I won't even have to payt to go to most of the games.

[jonwings]

Just a quick note from the hotel in Traverse City. Training camp is pretty awesome. We watched Zetterberg's group practice and it was pretty cool. I got tons of pictures. Babcock did lots of yelling and it was awesome.

There was one scrimmage game between Dat and Hossa's team vs Flip and Lidstroms team. Dats and Hossa's team won with goals from McCarty and Hossa.


After the scrimmage we went out back to see who was coming out for autographs. I got my Red Wings Mini keg signed by the following,

Darren Helm
Andres Lilja
Justin Abdelkader
Mattias Ritola
Chris Chelios
Jiri Hudler
Pavel Datyuk
Ken Holland
Mike Babcock

I got a bunch of picutres of that too. I'll post some when I get a chance sometime next week.

I'll post more detailed stuff when I get home.

[jonwings]

So I am home and I am really really tired. I really should have taken today off. Once I get to work and have some coffee I might be able to articulate things a bit better. Yesterday was great. I got to watch Dats and Hossa practice. Babcock was yelling some more. The scrimmage was fantastic. At the near the end of game, Kopecky got pissed when he went back to the bench and broke his stick over the railing. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

And, Chris Osgood and Jimmy Howard were eating dinner two tables down from us Sat night.

I love training camp.

[jonwings]

Ok, so after finally conquering the cold I picked up in Traverse City, I am finally ready to give you all my Red Wings Training Camp recap.

First off, while I have been to Michigan numerous times visiting family, this it the first I’ve been that far north in Michigan. I wasn’t really expecting the highway to end before we got to Traverse City and the two lane highway that takes you into town is very light on the road signs which made our late night arrival into Traverse City very interesting. But we got there eventually, and that was probably the worst part of the whole trip.

We got up Saturday morning, enjoyed the free breakfast at the Hampton Inn, before heading out to the Center Ice where they have the camp. I was decked out in the Zetterberg jersey and Aimee was in her McCarty jersey. There were a bunch of people there. From what I understood, they sold out both the Reserved Seating and Standing Room only tickets for both days. This is how it worked, the Wings players were split up into 3 teams and they split time practicing on the two rinks in the building. Each day there were 4 practice sessions and then a scrimmage between to the split squad teams. On Saturday, we watched the team Zetterberg practice for two sessions, caught a bit of Team Lidstrom w/Flip practice, and then watch the scrimmage between Teams Datsyuk and Lidstrom. The practices were fun. Babcock would run them through the drills and yell at them when they screwed it up and have them do it again. The scrimmage on Saturday, wasn’t all that great. The final score was Team Datsyuk 2 , Team Lidstrom 0. The goals were scored by Hossa and McCarty. A couple things I noticed from the game,

1) The line of Hossa - Datsyuk – Homer didn’t really look like it had gelled just yet. Hossa and Dats weren’t quite like Pav and Z yet, but I think that will come in time as they play more together.

2) The new 3rd line of Cleary – Flip – Sammuelson looked like they are going to be a really solid 3rd line. While they did not score, they pretty much had all of the good chances for their team and did a pretty good job controlling the puck on the offensive zone.

After the scrimmage on Saturday, we when outside where there was this huge mass of people waiting for the players to come out and sign stuff. There were obviously people there who just showed up to sit outside and wait for autographs. We went and got my Red Wing Mini Keg and found a place in line. You can see who I got to sign the keg on Saturday in my earlier post. All of the players were pretty cool. I got some cool pictures of myself with Datsyuk (although I look like a real joker in that picture) and Andres Lilija (who I had to physically restrain myself from shaking him and yelling at him for taking horrible penalties and making bonehead plays all the time). I got good pictures of everyone who came around. There is a nice one with Chelios and the keg. Chelios also told me that he was going to reopen the Chicago Chili bar when he moves back to Chicago. When Babcock was out signing, Aimee asked him to take a picture with the keg, said (basically) “just take the picture already, I’m not stopping you”, which seemed perfect coming from him. We ended up hanging around outside for few hours before heading back to the hotel.

That evening we checked out the beach across the street and then went over to the downtown area to walk around and find a place to eat. Traverse City had a cool little downtown area. We went in and out of a bunch of the shops. We picked up a bunch of cherry stuff, including some wine and coffee for my folks. We end up eating dinner at the Mackinaw Brewing Company. The food was really good, but the whole experience became even better when Chris Osgood walked right by our table a couple of different times. For a while it seemed like he was waiting for someone before he actually sat down to eat a couple tables down. From where we were sitting I could not see them, but Aimee had a pretty good view of them. He was eating with another player, who we decided was Jimmy Howard and another person I did not recognize. From what we could tell they both had soup and a pasta dish. The food and beer were good. Halfway through my 2nd glass of beer, the whole tri and long day caught up with me and we decided to call it a night.

Since we were heading back home after camp on Sunday, I was loading up the car before we headed out. On one of my trips out, I ended up talking to one of the members of the cleaning staff who was telling me about the Red Wing players she saw out at the casino that night. Even when we were sitting in the stands watching the practices and the scrimmages, it seemed like there was always someone with a Red Wing story from the previous night. That day we watch Team Datsyuk practice and then the scrimmage between team Zetterberg and Team Lidstrom. That scrimmage was a lot of fun. There was a lot of end to end action, lots of chances, and some actual goal scoring. Everyone was enjoying this game. Here are some things that stood out to me in this game (and during the camp overall),

1) McCarty was outplaying Downey. If the choice is between these two guys as to who stays with the big club and who does to Grand Rapids, McCarty should be the guy with the big club. It would not surprise me if the did not go with one of these guys off the back, since it looks like Kopecky was playing with an edge. I think he is really looking to bring the toughness this season.

2) Kronwall looked really good. He was carrying the puck up the ice up, around, and through people. He had a couple really good chances.

3) Hudler looked good on the line with Hank and Franzen. He had 3 glorious chances that he just missed on. If he is able to take advantage of these opportunities, he is going to have a huge year.

4) Jonathan Ericcson is the real deal. This guy is huge. I still do not think he is going to make the big club because of numbers, but he is ready to play now.

5) Darren Helm and Ville Leino were both pushing hard for that last roster spot. I thought Leino was a little more impressive than Helm from what I saw, but both have more skill and speed than McCarty and Downey. If McCarty makes the club over these two guys is because they are looking to add some more toughness not because McCarty is the more skilled player.

6) Zetterberg was his dominate self during the scrimmage. There were a couple stretches in the scrimmage after the score was tied that he just took control. I am looking for him to have another big year.

7) There were two of the prospects that really stood out to me. You could not help but notice them out there on the ice. They were Jan Mursak and Dick Axellsson. These two guys were magic out there on the ice together. Axellsson had 2 goals in the scrimmage. Mursak is playing in Grand Rapids this year and Axelsson is already back playing in Sweden. I think these are definitely two guys I am going to keep an eye out for.

8) The goalies looked good. I saw a lot of McCollum and Larsson and they both looked good. I did not get to see as much out of Howard and Conklin to make any substantive judgement. Although, I thought the best save I saw was made by Larry Sterling, who I think was invited to camp because they needed another goalie. He made a point blank save where he was literally standing on his head.

After the scrimmage, we decided to hang out for a bit to see if we could get any more autographs. When we got out there we just missed Jimmy Howard. Holmstrom has to leave just has he was getting to the section I was in. We did get autographs from Kyle Quincey, Joe Jusko, Jan Mursak, Kris Draper, Dan Cleary, and another prospect player whose name I can’t remember right now. Everyone was really nice and cool. As we were walking back to the car, Pat Verbeek walked right in front of us. It caught me off guard so I didn’t have a chance to pull out the keg, so I let him go to his car. Once we left Pat Verbeek we walk around the corner and saw Brian Rafalski signing as he was trying to leave. So, even though I missed out on Pat Verbeek, I did bet Brian Rafalski,

I got pictures of everything and hopefully I will have a chance to post some of those this weekend. I actually have them on my PC now, so it just a matter of loading them somewhere so I can post them.

Even though we both came back with colds, it was an excellent trip. I really enjoyed the Training Camp and Traverse City. If things work out, I am going to try to come back next year and maybe stay a bit longer than I did this time. I wouldn’t mind coming up sometime where I would have more time to explore the area. Maybe next year, you guys can have a Michigan sports Show meet up at Red Wings Training camp.