Rookie Tournament Opens, Hamara Impresses, Wheeler Loses Captaincy & More
This week is the week! Training camp gets underway in just a few days with physicals and the first official on-ice workouts. Over the past few days, some interesting things happened around the league. Let’s take a look!
- The Senators prospect receiving much of the spotlight over the past few weeks has been Tomas Hamara. After opening his OHL preseason with 6 points in 4 games, he turned his eyes towards Sens Rookie Camp. Scott Wheeler posted his own piece, outlining what’s been impressive so far from Hamara and what he’ll be watching for as the season progresses (paywall).
- As the Sens Rookies have dropped both games in the tournament so far, you can follow along with Ian Mendes’ notebook (paywall)./
The Winnipeg Jets announced this weekend that they’d be stripping Blake Wheeler of the captaincy in favour of a leadership-by-committee approach. Wheeler has been with the Jets for 11 seasons and has been the face of the franchise for the duration of that time. While newly appointed head coach Rick Bowness explained his reasoning, you have to wonder what exactly has been going on in the Winnipeg dressing room to have led to this.
- Reporters were abuzz over the weekend as the idea of Nathan MacKinnon potentially inking his new long term contract ahead of the season became the talk of Twitter-town. What will be interesting to watch here is that MacKinnon famously said he’d be willing to take less money to ensure the team can compete. After winning that Stanley Cup he was seeking, is that still the case or is he going for Auston Matthews money?
- Heading into training camp The Hockey Writer’s scribe Connor Hrabchak posted a great piece on who Hrabchak believes to be Ottawa’s three most underrated players. Before clicking the link, can you guess who makes the list?
- Brady Tkachuk joined Tim & Friends to kick off the season, answering questions and being his usual, fan-favourite self./