Hockey players from across the province displayed their skills in 100 Mile House from April 21 to 23 as part of the 100 Mile House Wranglers Junior Hockey Prospect and Showcase Camp.
The camp, run by Wranglers coach Dale Hladun aimed to identify players for the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League Junior B team as well as help other players advance onto Junior A teams.
Around 70 players played at the camp, organized into flexible groups that played games, ran drills and played in scrimmages throughout the weekend.
While Hladun scouted for his own team, a number of Junior A coaches attended the camp looking for prospects for their own teams; coaches from the Dayton Valley Thunder, the Nipawin Hawks, the Coquitlam Express and the Merrit Centennials were on hand to check out the talent. Other coaches have since reached out to Hladun for information about camp attendees.
“My attitude is there will be a lot of good players here and I can’t have all of them, so I tried to make it to the kids’ advantage to find [them] a team somewhere, whether it is with us or with somebody else,” says Hladun.
As a result, players from around the KIJHL, including the Kamloops Storm, the Revelstoke Grizzlies and the Chase Heat showed up to the camp as well as Wranglers prospects.
“Having all those experienced players plus our experienced players added really well to the pace,” says Hladun. “It allowed me a good measuring stick to see if the recruited kids or those identified were close enough to play.”
Overall, Hladun says there was an abundance of strong defencemen at the camp.
“I thought there were at least eight to ten kids who could play in our league right now for defence and there certainly will be some good young players who will be in the league next year or this year as affiliate players,” he says.
Hladun says he was happy to see a number of players from Williams Lake come to the camp and added there were a few surprises in some of the players who showed up.
“The kids from Fraser Lake were really good and Clearwater [had] really good surprises. They were young, they were the youngest players on the ice, but I’m going to stay in touch with those kids. They may be future Wranglers,” he says.
“I was happy to see what is coming down the pipe.”
During exit interviews, Hladun says he reached out to several of the players to say they could play for the Wranglers.
Because many of them are school-aged, he says it’s a conversation that will need to happen between them and their parents, but he expects to start confirming players for next year soon.
Hladun hopes to add to the success of the spring camp in future years. He says about a dozen Wrangler alumni showed up for the weekend and participated in a 45-minute open skate. In the future, he’s considering incorporating an alumni game into the weekend.
“They were just pumped to come back.”
Hladun is working on helping current Wranglers players move up in the hockey world and hopes to be able to announce new teams for some of this year’s players, but until then, he’s still on the hunt for players for next season.
“These are good players, and when you are a good player you get recruited by different teams,” he says.
Still, he says, he hopes to be able to make some announcements by the end of the month.