St. Louis Blues to Host 30 Players for Annual Prospect Camp
The St. Louis Blues will welcome some of their most intriguing young prospects for an instructional camp in St. Louis next week.
The St. Louis Blues announced on Tuesday afternoon that they’ll hold their annual Prospect Camp in St. Louis next week from July 5-8. 30 prospects will attend the camp, including six players who will be auditioning for the club on a tryout basis.
All eight of the players selected by the Blues in last weekend’s NHL Draft will attend the camp, including center Tage Thompson, the franchise’s first-round selection. Since Thompson is expected to return to the University of Connecticut for the 2016-17 season, this will be the first and only look that the front office will get at him in a Blues uniform for a while.
Other notable players who will attend the camp include 2015 second-rounder Vince Dunn, 2013 second-rounder Tommy Vannelli, and newly-signed college prospects MacKenzie MacEachern and Justin Selman.
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Also attending camp will be 2012 second-rounder Sam Kurker, who has had a long and tumultuous amateur career and re-emerged at Northeastern University last fall after previously playing at Boston University and for several USHL clubs. Kurker did not attend prospect camp last year.
Goalie Luke Opilka (hip surgery) and defenseman Jake Walman (shoulder surgery) will attend camp but will not participate in on-ice drills as they continue to recover. That’s somewhat of a disappointment, as both players are considered to be some of the Blues’ better prospects.
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The players will be divided into two teams that will scrimmage each day. (Ironically, they’ll be named Team Tkachuk and Team MacInnis; Keith Tkachuk and Al MacInnis have both seen their sons drafted by organizations other than the Blues during the early rounds of recent NHL Drafts.) Those scrimmages could provide an opportunity to discover some NHL-bound young players; they’ve served as a proving ground for Colton Parayko and Robby Fabbri in recent seasons.