With just four days to go before the 2016 Traverse City Prospect Tournament, tournament, the Jackets have finally released their tournament roster. The roster includes 12 draft picks, five free agent signings, and six invites. Two of those invites are the squad’s goaltenders making 2016 the first time that the Jackets bring no drafted goalies since 2009.
Some quick items of note:
- The Jackets are bringing a big team – only two players are under 6’0: dynamic forwards Vitalii Abramov and Dante Salituro
- Forwards Sonny Milano, Nick Moutrey, and defensemen Blake Siebenaler and Dillon Heatherington are going for the championship three-peat
- Five members of last year’s team will be competing for back-to-back honors
- Those returning players represent a squad that last year went 3-1, scored the second most goals, (only Dallas scored one more), and were the fourth best team in goals against
The tournament will again follow the usual format of splitting the eight participating teams into two divisions. The Jackets will play in the Gordie Howe Division and will play Detroit, Chicago and St Louis before playing the team in the same standings position from the Ted Lindsay Division on the final day. This will also mark Cleveland coach John Madden’s head coaching debut in the Jackets’ organization.
Now let’s take a look at the roster.
FORWARDS
The Jackets boast two first round picks in their forward group this year including the team’s highest pick in the 2016 entry draft and third overall selection (also the highest drafted player in the tournament as a whole) in Pierre-Luc Dubois. It is a bit of a surprise to see Sonny Milano heading back to Traverse after being part of the Calder Cup winning squad, but you have to remember that he missed most of his first trip to Traverse in 2014 due to injury.
After those two, the most skilled of the Jackets are the diminutive duo of Dante Salituro and Vitalii Abramov. Both players led their respective teams in overall scoring and goal scoring (38). Kole Sherwood hopefully will have an expanded role this year after playing mostly a fourth line role last year. The Central Ohio native has been scoring a lot so far this preseason and is currently tied for the lead in the preseason with five points in three games.
From out west, Keegan Kolesar is coming off a breakout season and is expected to be one of the TBirds go-to guys this year, if not their main offensive weapon. Paul Bittner, on the other hand, lost almost all of last season due to hip surgery but still picked up 21 points in 25 games with Portland along with making it into two games with the Monsters at the end of the season. Nick Moutrey is the only other forward who played a full pro season picking up 11 points in 53 games with the Monsters.
Let’s look at the new guys and invites:
- Justin Scott turned in an almost point per game season and a breakout playoffs performance to earn his entry level contract with the Jackets
- Francis Beauvillier is the elder statesman of the team at 22. He is the older brother of Islanders’ first round pick Anthony, and helped the University New Brunswick win its fifth National Championship since 2007
- Darby Llewellyn is the only player on the team who wasn’t at Development Camp but he was the Kitchener Ranger’s third leading goal scorer with 22
- Jordan Maletta is first of the four undrafted free agents signed by the Jackets this summer after serving as an alternate captain for the Eastern Conference Champ Niagara IceDogs and he finished second of the team in scoring and was the team’s leading goal scorer
- Calvin Thurkauf is the only other 2016 draft pick going to Traverse City and is expected to be a big time contributor to the mighty Kelowna Rockets this coming year
DEFENSE
Now where the offense shows a focus on skill, the defense this year is made up of mostly stay at home types. Zach Werenski is one of only four first round picks who will be patrolling the bluelines in Traverse and is second highest pick along with Carolina bringing seventh overall pick Haydn Fleury. Dillon Heatherington is a bit of a surprise coming to Traverse, as he was another part of the Monsters’ Cup run but he will be seen as a veteran presence on the blueline. Blake Siebenaler and Markus Nutivaaara are the rookies of the group and this play will also mark Markus’ North American debut after spending his whole career in Finland.
The only other signed dmen are Sam Ruopp and newly signed Jacob Graves. Both are pretty tough customers and had 100 plus penalty minutes last season. Ruopp has skipped Prince George’s training camp to get ready for CBJ camp which I find a little strange as he doesn’t have a contract yet and Cleveland may not be looking to add more to their blue line as they’re already nine or 10 deep on defense. If returned to Prince George, Sam would be the very rare three year captain in the CHL.
As for the invites, Stephen Gibson is a big defender who put up a career high 16 points this year for the Missassauga Steelheads. Frank Hora dropped from 33 points to 16 last year on the Kitchener Rangers blueline, but he played injured last season.
GOALIES
If you had to put a question mark on one part of the Blue Jackets Traverse City team, the goalies could be seen as that but maybe not. Lucas Peressini and Jeremy Brodeur were two of the better goalies in the Ontario Hockey League last year. Peressini was tied for sixth in the OHL in wins and Brodeur was tied for eighth. Peressini won 57 games in his final two OHL seasons and last year, in 47 games, he went 27-14-4 with a 2.85GAA, .906Sv% and 1SO. Peressini was also the OHL’s top goalie for the 14/5 season and was a 1st team all star the same season. Brodeur’s stat line is equally strong: 54GP 24-22-3 2.90GAA .905Sv% 6SO.
There you have it, folks, my take on the team the CBJ are sending to Traverse City. In my opinion, no other teams’ rosters really frighten me so maybe the CBJ can surprise some and pull off the first three peat in Traverse since the Blues won three in a row from 99 to 01. From a leadership perspective, for the last two years, the Jackets have settled on a captain and changed alternates from game to game. If I were to guess, I’d wager the captain’s C gets stitched onto Zach Werenski’s jersey.
As per usual I will be making the trek up to Traverse City along with our own Alisonl after practice on Thursday.
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