For Travis Ewanyk, just putting on a jersey was a big moment.
The St. Albert native who played his junior hockey for the Edmonton Oil Kings and was recently drafted in the third round (74th overall) by the Oilers was one of 31 prospects invited to the team’s development camp held this week at Millennium Place in Sherwood Park.
The chance to finally pull on a sweater sporting his favourite team’s logo was something Ewanyk will always cherish.
“It was pretty special,” he said. “It’s your hometown, you go to all the games when you’re a kid, you grow up watching them, then I was fortunate to be drafted by them. Putting it on the first time, it was an honour.”
Having grown up in St. Albert, played junior hockey in Edmonton and now drafted by the Oilers, Ewanyk realizes just how lucky he is to be living out the professional hockey dream so close to home.
“I can’t explain it,” he said. “I was super-fortunate to be drafted by Edmonton in the WHL, then the NHL. Just really lucky.”
Almost as lucky is fellow St. Albert Minor Hockey product and goaltender Tyler Bunz, who was drafted by the Oilers in the fifth round of the 2010 draft and who plies his trade for the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League.
This is Bunz’s second go-round at the Oilers’ development camp and he said he’s feeling more comfortable.
“I feel more relaxed and calm,” he said. “Last year I was kind of built up with excitement from all the media and fans and guys like Taylor Hall and [Jordan] Eberle that were here. This year, I’m more calm. I’m not letting all that stuff get to me.”
Last year, Bunz bore witness to the hype at development camp surrounding Hall and is seeing it again this year with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, drafted first overall by the Oilers from the WHL’s Red Deer Rebels.
He said that, with Nugent-Hopkins’s playmaking ability and Hall’s scoring touch, the two should complement each other nicely.
“Whenever Ryan makes the NHL, whether it’s this year or next year, they’re really going to be a big aspect in turning the Oilers around,” he said.
Bunz faced shots from Nugent-Hopkins in the WHL last year, but now that they’re wearing the same sweater, he said he’s found a new respect for him.
“I had never met up until this camp — just played against him — but he’s a really modest guy,” he said. “You wouldn’t for one moment think he’s a first overall pick. He’s a really quiet guy, sticks to himself. But when he’s on the ice, he shows that presence of a first overall pick.”
The same goes for Ewanyk, who got to know Nugent-Hopkins very well during the 2011 WHL playoffs as he was assigned to shut the Rebels’ centre down as they faced the Oil Kings in the first round.
“I spent a lot of time with him at the combine — all the Western Hockey League kind of hung out there — and he’s a great guy,” he said. “You kind of leave that stuff on the ice.”
With other players on the cusp of the NHL around the camp — like Anton Lander, Curtis Hamilton and Colton Teubert — Ewanyk said there have been plenty of pointers to pick up and work into his game.
“It’s been a great experience all around, all the on-ice stuff and off-ice,” he said.
Ewanyk is planning to train over the summer to get stronger prior to the Oilers’ main training camp later this year and hopes “to go as far as I can” there, but the 18-year-old knows he’s likely headed back to the Oil Kings for another year.
“I hope to be a leader on that team,” he said. “We’re going to have a really great team, a good group of guys, guys who are going to pro camps.”
For Bunz, he too is likely headed back to juniors, but he hopes to continue to improve.
“I want to get more … confident in my body in the net,” he said. “I’m not too sure what kind of team we’ll have this year. We’re losing a lot of key players. But Medicine Hat has a tradition of winning.”
But Bunz has another goal in mind as, coming off a solid season with the Tigers, he has earned an invitation to Hockey Canada’s national junior team summer development camp, which could be the first step toward playing in the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championships, this winter in Edmonton and Calgary.
“It’d be a pretty special feeling,” he said. “I want to enter into it with the mindset of just being another camp, but in the back of your mind, [I know] it’s going to be one of the biggest hockey points in my life.”
