Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

The Growth Of Prospect Tournaments

09/15/2021 at 1:56pm EDT

from Max Bultman and Sean Shapiro of The Athletic,

At the time, the Red Wings held their training camps at Joe Louis Arena, where they played their home games. But Holland — a former goaltender who had spent eight years in the American Hockey League — fondly remembered the bonding and team-building that had come with going away for a few days in those minor-league years: hanging out, playing golf and getting dinners with teammates.

So, when he took over as Detroit’s GM, he asked then-coach Scotty Bowman what he thought of moving camp outside the city. After a trip to Traverse City (located in the Northwest part of Michigan’s lower peninsula) to check out the rink, hotel and overall area, Holland was sold, and so it was that the Red Wings took their training camp up north.

But Holland still noticed one issue when it came to evaluating the prospects in the defending champions’ training camp.

“You’ve got young players coming to camp,” Holland said, “and you’re trying to evaluate them against (Steve) Yzerman and (Nicklas) Lidstrom and the Russian Five and (Brendan) Shanahan.”

“I remember watching these kids just getting left out to dry, they had no chance for any real evaluation,” Nill said. “This was where you get to the ‘there has to be a solution’ conversation about your problem.”

more ($$$), some other tournaments are mentioned too...

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