Your source for the latest news, views and observations from the Atlanta Thrashers practice arena.

ALLEN IVERSON

"TALKIN' 'BOUT PRACTICE"

FRIDAY JULY 10, 2009 - PROSPECT CAMP DAY #1

First let me say I am sorry for the long delay in updating thrashpractice.com. Mrs. Tackk was in a very serious car accident at the end of 2008 and has been recovering from her numerous serious injuries. We both thank everyone for your thoughts, prayers and good wishes as she continues in her rehabilitation.

I am planning to cover practices for the prospect camp, training camp, and during the season as my schedule allows. With that said -

Click here to access the prospect camp schedule on the Thrashers website.

I arrived at camp today early as I anticipated there being a lot of fans there. Of course, I was the first one there...all by myself...to find Angelo Esposito skating by himself. When he came off the ice I said hi to him and asked him how he was doing. He said he was doing better and was rehabbing from his torn ACL, which he suffered after the World Championships. He said that today was only the 6th time he has skated after his injury. He seemed in good spirits and I thought he looked good skating. I did not know he had been injured. The scheduled time for practice was 3 although they did not start until 3:30. At the time the practice started there were over 100 people in attendance although after the white team came out (around 4:40 or so) the crowd was down to 75 or so. In attendance were Don Waddell, a few of the scouts, Sam Crenshaw the TV sports reporter, Rick Dudley the new assistant GM, Coach Anderson, and a few of the asst coaches.

The drills were the same for both the Blue and White squads. Lots of skating, puck handling, some one on one drills, and more skating/puck handling. Not all the much shooting but there were some drills where the players actually got the shoot on net. I thought the players seemed pretty nervous and serious which is understandable. Overall I was not overly impressed with the quality of execution of the drills and puck handling. Some of the players (as in Kane and Leveille) were obviously better skaters (in my opinion) than most of the participants.

Here are a few other observations: Paquette is big. He had 200+ PIM last season in 60+ games and 50 points. Interesting stats. He did not get to participate in the prospect camp last year as he was injured. Today I thought he started out really good, fast, with some skill for a bigger player. He seemed to tire at the end of the 50-minute session. Kane and some of the other White squad players peeked their heads out of the locker room during the Blue squad practice to see what was going on and what the other guys were doing. The Swede Klingberg is big and has some obvious skills/speed. He also was asked to sign some autographs. Only other players on Blue squad who signed were Vinny Saponari and Chris Carrozzi. Vinny looked good. Seemed like on the shooting drills he was paired with someone who decided to shoot the puck so Vinny did not get to shoot all that often. Kane is a very skilled player. I don't know what it's called, or if there's even a name for it, but when he was skating forward and turning he would skate with one of his skates up such that only the heel of his blade was on his ice. I've seen some of the NHL skaters do this when turning and Kane seems to do it often. Last year at the draft we heard what a good skater Daultan Leveille is. I can say after watching him today I can understand why the scouts liked his skating abilities. He's at Michigan State (Slater's alma mater) and to me has some obvious skills. The Blue squad ended after 50 minutes but it was as if nobody wanted to be the first player off the ice. Anderson's son, who was on the White squad, was the first off the ice. Kane was the last White squad player off the ice and signed a fairly good number of autographs before going into the locker room.

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