The Carolina Hurricanes kicked off the first day of their prospect development camp Monday.
Each year, development camp serves as a way to not only gather benchmarks on the skill and fitness level of the Hurricanes' prospects, but also as a way to instill crucial fundamentals.
“Different players are going to take different things out of this," said Hurricanes defensemen development coach Peter Harrold. "We throw a lot at them and we know not all of it is going to stick, but we’re trying to give them some foundational and fundamental things in every area that we think is important. There’s technical, tactical, cognitive, nutrition and those types of things. We’re trying to hit a lot of the boxes and give them some of the things that they need so when they leave and come back, we’re not having to re-explain things and they can start developing the habits they need both in practice and in the weight room. Sleep and nutrition habits are huge as well. So we spend a lot of time off-ice on that stuff just to make sure they’re starting to engrain some of those things as soon as possible.
“They have to go back and play for their teams so we can’t give them our systems, but we can give them some of the stuff that they’ll see down the road and some generalized concepts.”
The Hurricanes aim with camp is to provide every prospect the tools and information necessary to help them succeed.
“Some guys never make it, but our job is to do everything we can to give them every opportunity to get there," Harrold said. "We give everybody the same type of treatment. We’re just trying to give them everything we can and some guys take it and progress faster and some guys it takes a little longer. Unfortunately, some don’t make it and that’s just the nature of it, but our job is to make sure we’re giving them everything that they need. If they work hard and they want it, most guys are going to make it that way. That’s just kind of the message from us.”
On-Ice
The prospects hit the ice for a little bit Monday, running a few reps of resistance band skate sprints.
“The 1080 Sprint is a way to measure force production," Harrold said. "So we can kind of dial in not only their stride, but it helps our strength and conditioning guys develop their off-ice workout programs to see more of what they need. The game’s played on the ice and it’s hard to really get a clear measure of that stuff objectively off the ice, so that actually helps us a lot. It’s a lot for the off-ice program than the on-ice stuff.”
The skaters were split into three groups with each running the drill about three times.
“It’s to test whether there’s imbalances between your legs or just to see how powerful you are as a skater," said UMass defenseman Scott Morrow.
After the three groups went, the Hurricanes then ran some drills with the four goaltenders in attendance mostly working on movement form and puck handling.
Off-Ice
In addition to on-ice training, the Hurricanes also run fitness testing in the weight room to gauge each prospects current fitness level.
The most notorious of them all being the stationary bike test.
"The bike test was tough for a lot of guys," Morrow said. "But I think the group did really well.”
"The bike was definitely tough," said 2023 third-rounder Jayden Perron. "It had just about everyone out.”
“It was hard, but obviously it’s something you have to do," said 2023 first-rounder Bradly Nadeau. "Hopefully next year I’ll be able to be better at it and get better results.”
But despite the difficulty of the tests, the staff was impressed overall by how the prospects performed.
“It’s a good group," Harrold said. "Honestly, they all have good personalities, they’re good kids. A lot of them worked really, really hard on the bike and a lot of them did well too. Maybe a little pleasantly surprised at how well they did in some of their off-ice testing. They’ve been great so far so hopefully it keeps going that way.”
A bit of tough news that came out early in the day from Carolina Hurricanes team reporter Walt Ruff was that Boston University defenseman Domenick Fensore would not be able to participate at camp due to injury.