Sens at Land’s End

Spotted at the Sens’ Development Camp at Bell Sensplex this morning:

• Me, freezing my butt off. Wow, it’s really cold in there.
• Team Blue (Nick Foligno, Peter Regin, Erik Karlsson, Ruslan Bashkirov, and someone else I can’t remember) defeating Team Red (Jesse Winchester, Jim O’Brien, and now my memory really fails me because I can’t think of the other players at all) to win the 3-on-3 tournament after a final game which had to go to overtime, then a shootout, then a sudden death shootout.
• Troublesome Russian prospect Ruslan Bashkirov scoring a pretty goal to win the shootout.
• Jim O’Brien playing a pretty aggressive style and taking the body a lot more than most other players seemed to. Well, his scouting report says he often comes up with the puck along the boards — I believe it. At one point he overskated the zone and crashed into Cody Bass (I think it was Bass anyway), who did not look amused. If O’Brien is going to bring the kind of battle-winning ability I saw from him today to the NHL, then I think he looks like a very good pick for the Sens, especially if he bulks up a bit. He seems as though he could be a real pain to play against.
• Jesse Winchester looking utterly winded after every shift. I wondered if he was hurt, or in poor condition, or maybe he was just working really, really hard. He was down on his hands and knees right away every time he came out of a game. I saw Foligno down on the ice talking to him once. My dad thought he was a great stickhandler.
• Brian Lee sporting a fantastic head of hair. He’s really quite adorable.
• 2008 first round pick Erik Karlsson … playing hockey, and probably being a character. The kid has a great personality. Read up on him here, hear his oddly Irish-sounding accent when he speaks English here, and find out what he thinks of IKEA’s Swedish meatballs here.
• Patrick Wiercioch, my new favourite prospect, poking a puck that had got stuck between the glass and the netting down for me with his stick. As if this article about his family wasn’t enough to make me root for him, he’s also bribing me with pucks for my puck collection. I’ll just start saving for my Wiercioch jersey now.
• Goaltender of The Future Brian Elliott not letting in a single goal in the entire tournament until the shootout.
• Bryan Murray watching the whole thing from above, and hopefully getting mentally prepared for the free agent insanity that awaits him tomorrow.

I said after the Draft that I was going to do a post talking about the Sens’ picks, but this one will have to do. Now you know: Patrick Wiercioch is the man.