Development camp and Free Agency thoughts

Development camp, day 1: a rousing success all around! ...well, mostly.

After observing all the young'ins doing their thing for about an hour, here are the thoughts I have on my first class of Bruins prospects ever, done peanut-gallery style a-la my shenanigans at the draft.

• Joe Colborne is a giant on skates, height-wise. While only three inches shy of Chara height, he is effectively the same exact size and shape as Blake Wheeler, except for one key difference: Wheels is four years OLDER than Junior Jumbo Joe. (Triple-J, for short.) J3, however, was about 15 pounds lighter at last year's training camp, which he attested to staying in school and putting the college hockey schedule to good use. Stick with it, J3, I'd love to see you come out of school even stronger than Wheels did!

• Conversely, Jason Lawrence (J-Lo!) is the wee-est rookie that ever rookied. Stick him on a line with J3 and hilarity will ensue! (THIS HAPPENED TODAY, I LAUGHED FOREVER; the line was J-Lo-Jeff LoVecchio-J3. THE TRIPLE-J LINE, to make things more confusing!) Poor J-Lo, at 5'9, is the shortest kid by two inches. Also one of the oldest, and also MY FAVORITE by default. GO BU! (unrelatedly, I wore my BU shirt today and got frowned at by some BC fans. Whatever, whatever.)

• I may be vaguely in love with Max Sauve. He is ACTUAL French (not pretend-French like those silly Quebecois) from Tours, France. Tours is 626 km (388.97 miles for we Americans) from Saint-Martin-d'Hères, France - the home of the only other French hockey player I care about: Cristobal Huet. It is also the home of some quite lovely architecture, and the birthplace of Sauve, who hit a puck RIGHT AT MY FACE. He's a speedy little bugger, good with the puck. Watched him do some fancypants Ned Lukacevic-style puck handling in the corner while waiting for drills. Good stuff, although he's on the small side.

• Interesting fact: The average height/weight of the Dev Camp Dudes is 6'1", 192lbs. Look out, smurf line.

• On the goalie front: As the world's biggest (unofficial) fan of Tim Thomas and His Epic Ragey Finn Protégé, I have to say...I'm happier now that we've signed Dany Sabourin. Prior to his signing, behind Tuukka, the depth ran as such:
  Kevin Regan
  Adam Courchaine/Kevin Nastiuk/Michael Hutchinson/Matt Dalton = cluster.
  Regan's a fair goalie, but I absolutely do not believe he's NHL ready, considering how much action he saw last year even at the AHL level (not much). Courchaine, Hutchinson, and Dalton looked like what they were, today - rookie goalies ready to start at the bottom and work their way up. Hopefully Sabourin will do better in Providence; maybe he'll split time with Regan and Regan will improve; whatever. I feel a lot better about stealing the starter from the Baby B's, now. (If only we had a Michal Neuvirth -type goaltender to have backed Ragey Finn up, last year! Oh well. If wishes were fishes...)

• Injuredpants McGee, otherwise known as Yannick Riendeau the new free agent from Quebec, did some skating on the goalie side of things after the zamboni cleaned the ice around 10:45; he looked good, took some shots, and stared intently into our eyes (or, cameras, rather.)
  

  From Dev camp day 1

  Pretty good!
  He had a good attitude outside, after; when asked how his shoulder was feeling (it was back in a sling) he just smiled and shook his head. "It's getting there."

• I do not begrudge any of the others their chance to be a Bruin after watching some of those drills today, including hopping across the ice using only one skate, regular skating across the ice - on only one skate, and miscellaneous other cardio-style skating drills. And this was before the off-ice portion even started...barf.

• Milan Lucic and David Krejci were in attendance. Krejci totally snuck through the crowd, then turned around and gave us all a nice smirk while we all did a complete, cartoony double-take upon realizing who he was. AWESOME. My team, man. So great.
  

I'm cautiously optimistic about all the moves the B's have made so far. All my moaning and groaning Habs fan friends are singing Steve Begin's praises at me, and I trust them, so that's good. Odds are he'll be replacing Stephane Yelle on the fourth line. So long, Yeller. Aside from him, Montador is off to Buffalo (bye, Monty! Hope you fit in better elsewhere!) and Sheriff Shane Hnidy is off to Minnesota to hang with Martin Havlat and the Wild (I bet Jack Edwards cried, that day.) Byron Bitz has been re-signed (WOO BITZYCAT!), as has Mark Recchi (ONE MORE YEAR OF RECCHING BALL, WOO!) and Matt Hunwick appears to be inching in that direction by way of filing arbitration last Sunday.

Elsewhere in the NHL....there are way too many shenanigans for me to think coherently about. So, a list!

• Getting Habs fans to enjoy Milan Lucic beating up on newly-made Toronto Leaf Mike Komisarek will be fuuuuun. :D
• Martin Havlat to the Wild = fail.
• Saku Koivu to the Ducks = also fail. Where is the Montreal team that I know and hate? Oh wait, the Kostitsyns are still around, as well as O'PurseStealer. We're good, we're all good here.
• AK27 to the Sens? Meh. I never really cared much about him or the Sens. That'll probably remain on par for the course.
• Avs drafted Keiran Millan. So, in three years they'll have a good goalie! *facedesk* With that, C.Cohen, and Brandon Yip, I'm at least somewhat happy to see Colorado becoming BU West.
  
• Khabibulin to Edmonton makes me sad.

That's all for now....more from dev camp tomorrow!