NHL Prospect Tournament 2009 Preview – Part 2

This years NHL Prospects Tournament is hosted (as usual) by the Detroit Red Wings in Traverse City, Mi, home of the Wings training camp. It will take place from September 6-10, the week prior to all of the NHL training camps kicking off, and will include eight teams Detroit, Atlanta, Columbus, St. Louis, Dallas, New York Rangers, Minnesota, and Carolina.

In the first part of my Tournament preview I talked about Atlanta, Carolina, Dallas and Minnesota. The 2nd Part of my preview will cover 3 of the remaining 4 teams the New York Rangers, Columbus, and St. Louis who have just recently finalized their rosters for the tournament.

St. Louis is bringing the player with the most NHL experience in Alex Pietrangelo, the 4th overall pick in 2008 played 8 games last season before being sent to the Niagara Ice Dogs of the OHL following an early season head injury, once in Niagara he scored 29 points in 34 games.  Pietrangelo along with Erik Johnson looks to be the front runner to lead the defense core of the Blues into the next decade. The Rangers are also debuting a highly touted defenseman in this years tournament in Michael Del Zotto,  he made a big impact last season in the OHL where he averaged over a point per game with 2 different teams(Oshawa and London) in the OHL last season, scoring 63 points in 62 games. He also helped lead the London Knights to the OHL semi finals where they lost to the Windsor Spitfire’s the eventual league champions. Columbus had a break out year in 2008-09 when they made the playoffs for the first time, this run was fueled by some young talent(Voracek and Broussard) as well as some veteran signings. Representing Columbus this year is a lesser heralded group of prospects, front lined by a kid who has already retired and un-retired Bret Favre style before he was even 20, Stefan Legein. The second player that caught my eye is John Moore the 21st pick overall from the 2009 draft, he is an offensive defenseman with a lot of upside. At the moment Moore is at least 3 years away from being in the NHL but playing with his peers he should be a very entertaining player to watch.

Tomorrow I will preview the Red Wings prospect tournament roster with a little more indepth information containing  Links and Video’s to a few of the more notable players.

As of right now, it looks like I will be able to attend the last 2 days of this tournament, and I look forward to bringing you guys pictures and breakdowns of players who play well and players that don’t.

My name is David Swartzlander check me out on Twitter @octopusthrower