Keith Aucoin (left to right), Vince Bellissimo and Jakub Vojta scrimmage at the Carolina Hurricanes 2006 Training Camp at RecZone in Raleigh on Monday, September 18, 2006.
When Keith Aucoin showed up in Kitchener, Ontario in September 2001, even his teammates didn’t know who he was.
He was a diminutive forward from a program with a profile as slight as his height at Norwich University, Vermont’s Division III military school. However, Tom Rowe, general manager of the Hurricanes’ AHL affiliate in Lowell, Massachusetts, liked Aucoin’s level of skill and signed him for his league minor. The Hurricanes added him as a warm body to fill out the tournament’s roster.
Looking back, I didn’t have a lot of skill on the ice that week. Mike Zygomanis, the Hurricanes’ second-round pick that June, was the Hurricanes’ biggest star. Most of the names on the roster – Sean Fisher, Peter Reynolds, Sean Curry, (not so) Ryan Murphy – sound like they were auto-generated by a video game. Their first-round pick, Russian defenseman Igor Knyazev, is currently on the current place file and wasn’t joining the team until next week in Florida.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins and New York Rangers had some decent players on the ice, but they busted more than their stars.
However, undrafted players dominated against the large number of players that NHL teams considered draftable. 3 During his game, Aucoin centered his first row out of his third row for the Hurricanes, leading the tournament in scoring and starting an unlikely professional career. That performance didn’t earn him an invite to his camp in training either, but the prospect ended up playing more NHL games (145) than anyone on his team, with the exception of Zygomanis (197). I was. Second-round picks Thomas Kulka and Brett Lysac appeared in a combined 19 games, while goaltender Rob Zepp appeared in 10.
It’s the magic of that kind of tournament, opening the door to opportunity and creating those rare moments when a player no one has heard of takes the storm by storm.
In 2001, an event like this would never have occurred here, but 20 years later, after trips to Kitchener and Kanata, Ontario, Ottawa and Traverse City, Michigan, Nashville and Tampa , The Hurricane will be held for the first time this weekend at the Wake Competition Center and PNC Arena.
A remarkable event full of hope, promise and possibility. For a few days, anything seems possible for everyone on the ice and everyone watching.
People don’t always jumpstart their careers like Aucoin or Chad LaRose (Kanata, 2003). Whether first-round picks are ready for the NHL, Eric Stahl (Ottawa, 2003), Andrew Rudd (Ottawa, 2005) and Andrey Svechnikov (Traverse City, 2018). No one expected Seth Jarvis last yearbut he started extorting trouble in Tampa and never stopped.
Even if 2019 first-round pick Nick Suzuki makes his third tournament appearance, there’s no such near-term star on this year’s roster, so 24-year-old Russian defense giant Grigori Dronov will be the star of the show. may surprise someone. – Years of unsigned invitees.
But that’s the mystery of it. Mid-level prospects could dominate among the peers here, especially if there’s no obvious future star, or someone who’s just a name on the roster could steal the show. is the kind of year that someone can do what they did in 2001, and for the first time they can do it here.
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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered six Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl, and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup. He currently serves as president of the Basketball Writers Association of America, and in 2020 he won the National Headliner Award as a top sports columnist in the country, and he has been named North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year twice.
