Things have certainly calmed down a bit from this time last week, eh? The Thrashers prospect camp is in full swing in Duluth and I had a chance to sit down with center Bryan Little and goalie Ondrej Pavelec over the weekend for a pair of stories running this week. One will examine the options for the Thrashers hole at center and Little is doing whatever he can to remain an option. Sure he’d probably benefit from a year in Chicago, but he’s got two trainers and is constantly working out to make sure he’s in shape for training camp. He’s even boxing, although it’s strictly for the conditioning. “I’m not a fighter,” he explained.

Pavelec is an interesting story for a lot of reasons. For one, he decided to sign with the Thrashers despite the fact that Kari Lehtonen is firmly entrenched as the goalie of today and the future. But there is potential for a great rivalry between the two goalies if Pavelec goes and has a strong season in Chicago this year. He seems to have learned from mistakes from the past, including showing up last season weighing a hefty 220 pounds. He was told he’d better lose the weight or he’d watch from the stands. He lost the weight.

Thrashers Director of Amateur Scouting and Player Development Dan Marr, who is running the camp, said he’s been really impressed with the conditioning of all the prospects even before the camp started. It used to be there was a huge gap between the least conditioned and those in the best shape, but that gap has disappeared. He said the younger players are starting to understand the importance of getting physically ready for the NHL, even if they can perform well in the lower levels without being in top-notch shape.

Marr also stressed that this is strictly a conditioning camp, so there isn’t a ton of player evaluation going on. But since Grant Lewis just signed, and I don’t know much about the defenseman prospect from the Ivy League, Marr was kind enough to break down Lewis’ game for me. Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

Marr: “[Lewis] is a terrific skater. He can gain a step on you, just pulling away or in transition. He played in the Ivy League with Dartmouth so his numbers are somewhat elevated but they didn’t play enough games and he had some injury situations where he never really got into a rhythm. His first year he had his shot going and that’s when we drafted him. The next year everybody knew they were going to give him the puck on the power play so they took away his shot and so his numbers went down….

…. Grant kind of, it’s just a natural thing, you get in a routine where you don’t play as many games, it’s not hard to get things done, we really got on him this year that he had to up the tempo of his game. It doesn’t matter what the other guys are doing who are graduating and going into other fields. If you want to be a hockey player this is what you have to do. He got hurt the very first game of the season and that put a damper on his development. He battled through…

…If he would have played more games, his development would have been accelerated but it hasn’t. We’re not quite sure what we’ve got yet until he plays a lot more games. But we know that he can really skate, he’s a good athlete. He’s one of these naturally wirey athletic guys. He’ll find out soon enough if his strength is where it has to be to handle defending against bigger players and battling one-on-one. He has a good first pass which is a key for an NHL defenseman, getting the puck out of your own end. We know he has all the ingredients.”

If you’re looking for more breakdown from the camp, Ben Wright has been blogging from the camp on the official Thrashers blog. The Falconer also did some blogging from the prospect camp.

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