Kleinendorst on the U18 tournament in Minsk

I didn't intend to write this article. I intended to get some material to use in a couple features about NTDP guys who are eligible for the draft. But Kleinendorst talked so much about the tournament itself in answering the questions that this review just kind of wrote itself. Besides, the USA won and it was hugely undercovered, even in the prospects media. This team is so accessible and has a history of winning, yet they are largely ignored.

Kleinendorst himself seems destined for greatness. I suspect he'll be an NHL head coach in a year or two. He's already got AHL head coaching experience, and NHL assistant experience. Very professional, says all the right things and means them. I look forward to talking to him next year too.

I'll have a couple features and a ranking article before the draft.


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NTDP at Indiana

A few photos from the USNTDP at Indiana last night. I'll have features on Johns and Moffatt in a few weeks.

Frank Simonelli with a high leg kick in warmups. I don't think this is in the textbook.


Luke Moffatt yakking it up on the faceoff. You might think he's just catching up with a former teammate in Mattson, but he seemed to chat up a lot of people on the faceoff. He's just a chatty kind of kid.

Jarred Tinordi vs. Brian Ferlin. Tinordi stood him up hard at the blue line, that's what brought this on. It was just a good defensive play.

Tyler Biggs vs. Chris Martin. I think Biggs grabbed him by the mouth here. He's someone I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. He looks like a great player for 2011 though.


This image cracks me up. Rather than smush into the end of the bench in a chair like most backups, Jack Campbell stood behind the bench with the coaches. Looks quite out of place. He got ice water dumped on him in the shower later and screamed quite loudly. A bunch of jokers these guys.
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Notebook cleanout from the U18s

Most of the information I gathered at the U18s went straight into prospects' profiles and feature stories at HF. That process is still going on. But here's a few leftovers.

• I think Nashville will try to take Ryan O'Reilly. They already have his brother Cal and I was chatting with a scout in the stands and when I said I was originally from Erie, he brought up O'Reilly and said how much he liked him. I later found out he worked for Nashville.
• Jerry D'Amigo put up a lot of points. But I kept thinking "all he can do is score goals." While that sounds great, being one-dimensional doesn't get you to the NHL.
  
• Adam Murray made some big motions in net for the USA, like a windmill and a couple statues of liberty. Good goalies make the hard saves look easy by being in position for them to hit in the stomach. But what he was doing was making normal saves look hard. I see why he is ranked so low.
• Team USA captain William Wrenn had the misfortune of being paired with Nick Mattson, who was not impressive. I wanted to see Wrenn separately.
• David Valek (USA) was invisible. I looked for him a few times, just to fill something in for him, and still had nothing to say.
  
• Simon Bertilsson looks a lot like Jimmy Slater in the face. And they are both poor interviews, but for different reasons. Bertilsson only speaks Swedish. Slater only speaks cliche.

• Russian warmups was pure chaos. There didn't seem to be much of a plan, and by the end it deteriorated into individuals roaming on their own, doing trick shots. You can see a lot of a people's culture in their warmup I think.
  
• Tarasenko, 2010-eligible, really likes attention. Really really likes attention. Not only does he talk when the questions aren't posed to him, he saw me with a camera and was posing. Much like Angelo Esposito has done in the past.
  
• Czech Roman Horak has talent, but he's a hot dog who only skates hard when he has the puck. He stood around most of the warmup. I got a photo of him scratching his backside in warmup and that kind of epitomized things.

• If Sweden had had a little better goaltending, things might have been different. It was the weakest position on a top-notch squad. Using their skill instead of their force would have played more to their advantage as well.
  

USNTDP to rejoin USHL

I always thought it was weird that they weren't there to begin with. Seems very logical as far as level and geography go.

From USHL.com:

The United States Hockey League in conjunction with USA Hockey is pleased to announce that the USA Hockey National Team Development Program (NTDP) will become full-time members of America's Tier I league, effective the 2009-10 season. This will mark the second foray for Team USA into the United States' top league as a full-time member. They were previously a part of the USHL in the 1998-99 and 1999-00 seasons.

"The re-association of America's only Tier I program with the national program in place in Ann Arbor will yield a powerhouse league second to none in the United States – and the strongest opportunity ever developed for the world'selite 17, 18, 19 and 20-year-old hockey players to develop their skills on their way to college and professional distinction," USHL Commissioner Skip Prince said.

On a related note, it's a long shot, but the USHL may be coming to Youngstown, Ohio too.