I saw my first Winterhawks game of the year Friday night, as Portland played the Edmonton Oil Kings. I chose that one so I could see Mark Pysyk play, but of course in seeing the Winterhawks I got to see another Sabres prospect in Riley Boychuk.
Mark Pysyk:
First thing I noticed with this guy was he's kind of small. Fast enough, seems to have a pretty good head for the game, but nothing popped out. I saw him make a very nice defensive play to stop a 2-on-1 once, and I got to see a pretty nice shot from the point once, but overall I didn't feel like he left his mark (pun intended) on the game. He is their captain and was a first round pick, so I was expecting to see a lot of him. But in situations where I might have thought he'd be out there like on the 1st powerplay unit, or on the penalty kill, he was frequently on the bench. Also his team lost 5-2 (two empty-netters, but still a pretty sound beating). Not really what I was hoping to see out of Pysyk all in all.
He did play a pretty good team in Portland though. Including one Riley Boychuk, the Sabres' final pick of this last draft.
Riley Boychuk:
Boychuk is a bigger guy than Pysyk for any of you Darcy loves midgets crowd. He had a pretty nice feed to set up the first Portland goal. He didn't look out of place on a good Portland team. That said, he couldn't compare in skill to what some of the other Portland forwards like Neiteretter or Johanson. Probably not a fair comparison since those guys were first rounders, but I guess I'm just trying to say I didn't see anything that tell me this guy is going to make the NHL very soon. I'll probably be seeing more of Boychuk soon and can give you a little more detail there.
If I can swing it, I'll try to see the Chilliwack Bruins as well to get a look at Kevin Sundher.
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