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Um Haven para o Hockey Malnourished

Os dias os mais frios aquecem melhor meu coração do hockey

Oskar Osala, too, is turning a lot of heads with his physical play and general aggressiveness and good decision-making. Recall that this past season he enjoyed a bit of a blossoming one the biggest stage for prospects: the most recent World Juniors. His poise and presence this week appears to be carrying over from that. There is a clear confidence displayed on his shifts that wasn’t often evident in Ashburn.

In the middle of last season I had great exchange with an NHL scout who had as his primary coverage area the CCHA. After the Caps signed Sean Collins this spring he emailed me with a prediction that Caps’ fans would in short order be very happy with the signing. This week, I’m seeing a lot of support for that sentiment. Collins is good-sized and mobile and an adept puck distributor. And adept puck distribution is a theme fast becoming emblematic of the organization’s rearguards. Collins, Alzner, Godfrey, Lepisto, even Big Joe Finley — the shifts and pairings on the back end don’t much seem to matter; we in the stands aren’t witnessing much hair-on-fire mayhem when the puck’s on these guys’ sticks deep along the boards or in the midst of frenzied forechecking. Melikey.

A terrifically important thing to keep in mind as you take in these scrimmages: guys like Joudrey and Gordon and Morin and Backstrom are at times matched with and against guys who knew nothing better than Northeast prep puck this past season as competition. So you’re talking about fellas who’ve completed in some instances four years of major college hockey, or one or two World Championships, under the tutelage of some of some of hockey’s best coaches, battling against those who were slow dancing at Prom just a few weeks back. But it’s within this context that my main point here is further amplified: Andrew Glass, who won’t enroll in freshman composition at BU until 2008, looks anything but out of place against young world-class competition.