Looking to earn their spot

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This article was published 06/12/2017 (2846 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was this time last year that Brett Howden was dealt the discouraging news that his country wouldn’t be in need of his services in their pursuit of gold.

This year, the 19-year-old centreman with the Western Hockey League’s Moose Jaw Warriors said he plans to enter Hockey Canada’s world junior selection camp this month not only better prepared on the ice, but off of it, too.

“Everybody is going to have to come to camp ready to go and there’s no way around it,” Howden, who grew up in Oakbank, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I was there for three days last year and then got sent home. I learned a lot and if you’re not ready to go right away then things can turn for the worse pretty quick.”

Howden said he used the disappointment of last year’s early dismissal from camp as motivation to prove he was worthy of donning the Maple Leaf. He finished the 2016-17 season third in scoring for Moose Jaw, with 38 goals and 81 points in 58 games. After the Warriors were edged by the Swift Current Broncos in Game 7 of the opening round of the playoffs, Howden was promoted to the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League.

While with the AHL club, Howden recorded three goals and one assist in five regular-season games and added two assists in three playoff games as the Crunch went all the way to the final before falling to the Grand Rapids Griffins in six games.

“The development that I had up in Syracuse was huge for me. Really it was just realizing how fast the game is and how quickly you’ve got to make decisions,” said Howden, a first-round pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2016.

Howden has 11 goals and 27 points in 18 games this season with the Warriors, who, heading into Wednesday’s games, held a four-point lead over the Broncos for first place in the WHL with a record of 22-5-1-1.

Still, as Howden looks through the list of players invited to this year’s camp — which kicks off Tuesday in St. Catharines, Ont., and will include a pair of games against U Sports all-stars Dec. 13 and 14 and an exhibition game against Denmark Dec. 15 — he knows he won’t be able to lean on what he’s done in the past.

“You look at every position and it’s so deep. There’s so much skill and work ethic,” he said. “You can go through the list and you will find that in every one of those players.”

Howden is one of three Manitobans — along with Winnipeg’s Cody Glass and Brandon’s Tanner Kaspick — to be selected for the camp. In total, 32 players will battle for 23 spots on a final roster that will be tasked with claiming gold at the 2018 world junior championship in Buffalo, N.Y. The tournament runs Dec. 25 to Jan. 5.

Glass, 18, said he found out he was invited to camp on Tuesday when he received a call from Hockey Canada. The 2017 sixth-overall pick to the Vegas Golden Knights has longed for such a moment since he was a little kid.

“Watching the world juniors as a kid, that was probably the biggest stepping stone growing up and wanting to be there and now that it’s almost true, getting the chance to try out for the team is something else,” Glass said. “I’m not a cocky player who expects to be on the best teams, but as soon as I got the call I was excited and really happy.”

Glass is enjoying a stellar season with the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL. The 6-2, 178-pound centre is sixth in league scoring with 20 goals and 48 points in 27 games. Glass knows he won’t be able to ride the fact he was a high draft pick, not with so many others in the same situation attending camp — 11 first-round picks, including five from June’s NHL draft, will be in attendance.

Like Howden, Glass said where he can stand out is his ability to be effective at both ends of the ice. Possessing a two-way game is something he prides himself on and something he believes Canada will be looking for when making their final decisions.

“A lot of players, they play only one way and I think I bring a lot to the table,” he said.

Glass and Howden are expected to compete for a bottom-six forward role for Canada and could ultimately end up playing on a line together. It’s an intriguing thought, to be sure, but what has Glass most excited is thinking about all the people back home that will be glued to their televisions once the tournament begins on Boxing Day.

“That’s probably the most amazing part is knowing how big it is in not only Winnipeg, but across Manitoba,” he said. “Everybody is going to be watching.”

As for Kaspick, who is considered to be the long shot among the group from Manitoba, he looks forward to proving his game can mesh well at the international level. The 6-1, 206-pound forward, while playing on Team WHL in the annual CHL-Russia series last month, received a checking to the head major. He was booted from the game and issued a one-game suspension from the WHL.

“I know I’ve gotten in some trouble in the past month here, but other than that I’ve usually been pretty good at being able to play a hard-nosed game without getting any penalties,” Kaspick, who has seven goals and 18 assists, along with 37 penalty minutes in 24 games with the Brandon Wheat Kings, told the Brandon Sun. “Obviously at this level, not only with the reffing but with the stakes being this high and power plays being as good as they will be, it’s magnified that much more. You have to be conscious of it, but it’s not something that I’m concerned about.”

Other players with Manitoba connections invited to camp include Wheat Kings defenceman Kale Clague and Winnipeg Jets prospect Logan Stanley, a defenceman with the Ontario Hockey League’s Kitchener Rangers.

Canada is coming off a silver-medal performance in 2017 after a 5-4 shootout loss to the United States in the final at Montreal’s Bell Centre. Canada has won 16 gold medals since the inaugural tournament in 1977, but has just one — 2015 in Toronto — in the last eight years.

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @jeffkhamilton