ALEX MEDINA @alex_medina5 / CalgaryFlames.com
That’s a wrap!
Saturday morning at Winsport marked the final on-ice sessions for Flames Development Camp, with a handful of three-on-three games, which saw Team Black win the newly named Snowy Cup with a 3-2 triumph over Team White.
From the start of the week the message was clear how much this camp was about learning and becoming better, and from Flames general manager Craig Conroy’s point of view it was mission accomplished.
“I liked the work ethic, the boys worked hard,” Conroy said. “There wasn’t a lack of effort. And it’s summer, some guys have skated, some guys haven’t, but overall you look at testing scores, you look at where we want to be and talk to the support staff, and you love when they say how good people they are.
“They pick up after themselves, their respective. They worked hard and its just a good group. You aren’t just doing the on-ice evaluation, you are doing the evaluation of what they are like as people, too.”
“I liked the work ethic.”#Flames general manager Craig Conroy gives his assessment on Development Camp. pic.twitter.com/lkC8tffFJ5
— Calgary Flames (@NHLFlames) July 8, 2023
From off-ice workouts to skill work on it, the camp had a little bit of everything with some team building sprinkled in between.
Sure, the formal part of development camp may be over, but that doesn’t mean that the communication and work stops here.
In a way, this was just the first step.
“We have a long time and that’s a good thing,” Conroy explained. “As we do the testing, you can see where the deficiencies are with a player if they need to be more aerobic or if they need to be more explosive. Ricky (Rick Davis) will set them up with ‘this is how we get better, if we do this you guys are really going to continue going to that direction.’
“We can compare them to NHL players, too, that’s the secret. When they get to compare their scores to an NHL player they can be like ‘oh, okay, I gotta get better.’ It just shows them. It’ll push them the next … they probably have the next four, five, six weeks and you can get a lot done in that time.”
As players were packing up their gear, Conroy and Jarome Iginla could be seen pulling players aside for some more one-on-one time.
With a combined 2,563 NHL games experience, the pair make quite the dynamic duo in sharing their vast knowledge of the game.
“They know who Jarome is. They know how many goals he’s scored, that he’s a hall of famer,” Conroy said. “To have him come in to give pointers … him being a coach, with the hand positioning, with the shooting that he was talking to Honzek about and the skating with Lipinski, he sees it from a different perspective which is great.
“They seemed like sponges listening to him. They did some great things but it’s about getting better. To make it to the NHL you gotta take it from where you are to a whole other level. Hearing it from him, they seem excited to talk to him which was nice.”
