CRANBERRY, Pa. -- One of Nolan Collins' earliest memories of being at an NHL game came in Pittsburgh.
Collins, a right-handed defenseman who was the Penguins' sixth-round pick Friday in Montreal, grew up in Whitby, Ontario rooting for the Penguins. His fandom was passed down to him from his father Justin, who he says is a "die-hard" Penguins fan.
Collins said he was about seven years old when he and his dad made the trip down to Pittsburgh for a Capitals-Penguins game to see the Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin rivalry in person, each donning No. 87 jerseys:
NOLAN COLLINS
Fast forward 11 years later, and Collins is sitting in a stall in the Penguins' locker room at the Lemieux Complex -- only a couple of seats down from where Crosby usually sits -- for his first prospect development camp as a member of the Penguins organization.
Collins, who plays for the OHL's Sudbury Wolves, told me that he was hopeful he'd hear the Penguins call his name on draft day. He had an interview with Penguins scouts just once before the draft, and he went into Day 2 of the draft on Friday crossing his fingers that he'd hear his childhood team call his name.
Collins woke up on Friday and went through his normal routine -- Work out, skate, shower. He tried checking his phone at the rink for any kind of an update at the draft, but Canadian telecom provider Rogers went completely down for many customers across Canada on that day. Collins was left in the dark until he could race home and turn on the TV.
Collins raced home from the rink, and not long after flipping on the TV, he saw his name come across the screen next to the Penguins' logo. The Penguins were high enough on Collins that they traded forward prospect Liam Gorman to the Blackhawks to acquire an additional sixth-round pick, No. 167 overall, that they used on Collins.
"Me and my family just went crazy," Collins told me of that moment. "My grandma, she came upstairs and was like, 'What happened?! Who got hurt?!' Everybody just screamed as loud as we could. It was such a surreal, cool moment. I've ran it back in my head, I don't even know how many times. The best day of my life was Friday and it feels amazing to be drafted."
Penguins president of hockey operations Brian Burke has a couple of Burke-isms to describe the big, heavy style of hockey he likes to see. One is the word "truculence," another good one is the term "long pants hockey,"
Collins definitely plays "long pants hockey."
He's big -- that's clear. He's listed at 6-foot-3, and he's filled out more than other tall players typically are at his age, being listed at 195 pounds. And he puts that size to use.
"I'm a defensive, shutdown defenseman," Collins told me of his style. "I think my bread and butter is clearing the front of the net and making strong defensive plays, physicality. That's my game, and that's what fans can expect from me."
Wolves head coach Craig Duncanson told the Sudbury Star before the draft that he thinks those kind of big, shutdown defensemen like Collins are becoming more and more important in the postseason as of late.
“I have been watching the Stanley Cup playoffs and big defensemen who play well defensively and block shots and clear the front of their net seem to be a formula that works really well,” Duncanson said. “I just think he can grow into one of those menacing defensive defensemen who move the puck and can be a jack of all trades, but he really pays attention to his own end and I thought he did a remarkable job this year. If nobody takes him in the draft, it will just cost them more to get him down the road when they have to sign him as a free agent. I’m fairly confident in that.”
Collins is hoping that his kind of style is his path to making it to the NHL.
"I feel like every single team needs a third-pairing defenseman who can kill penalties, block shots and is willing to do the dirty things," Collins said. "That's what I'm willing to do, and that's what I think I bring to a hockey team."
While Collins' "bread and butter" is that sort of physical, defensive play, he does have a bit of an offensive dimension to his game, scoring four goals and 14 assists in 65 games with Sudbury last season. He doesn't shy away from moving up and joining the rush when the opportunity is there. He played forward up until he was about 12 or 13 years old, and he thinks he developed "good offensive habits" during that time that he was able to carry over when he made the move to playing defense.
"I can move the pucks up the ice quick," he said. "I'm not just limiting myself to just a shutdown. I think I have some offense in my development. I want to keep developing that as my junior career goes on."
Collins says he likes to model his game after someone like Colorado defenseman Josh Manson -- someone who can chip in offensively, but that's not where he contributes most on the ice.
"You can play him in any situation," he said of Manson. "He kills penalties. He does all the dirty things. He's willing to be physical and stick up for his teammates. That's who I want to be like."
Collins doesn't have any major, specific areas of his game that he wants to focus on improving the most in the coming years in the OHL. He's returning to a Wolves team that narrowly missed out on a playoff spot this past season. He's looking to keep growing his overall game and help Sudbury make it to the postseason.
"I just really want to take the next step here with my team in Sudbury," he said. "I think we have an amazing group of really young guys and we're going to be a really good team this year and in the next couple years. I want to make sure I'm a leader on that team and continue to develop my entire game playing there this next couple of years."
EDDIE PROVIDENT / DKPS
J.D. Forrest at the whiteboard in Day 1 of development camp.
MORE FROM CAMP
• Goaltender Filip Lindberg was back on the ice in a practice setting for the first time since he suffered a season-ending ankle injury on Nov. 12, just seven games into his professional career in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. He left practice about midway through, but J.D. Forrest said afterward that was a planned part of Lindberg's rehab.
"He wants to play," Forrest said of Lindberg. "He's a competitor, he started off hot with us and he wanted to continue that. It just took a little bit to figure out exactly what (the injury) was. Once that was taken care of it's just a process. He hadn't been injured in the past in his career, so it was something new for him. And he's the guy wants to be on the ice all the time. But he's been doing the right things. He's been working hard over at home. And he looks he looks pretty good right now."
• Goaltender Joel Blomqvist didn't participate in practice, but rather watched the session from the bench in street clothes. I was told that Blomqvist is totally healthy. But on his travels from Finland to the U.S., British Airways lost his luggage and he doesn't have any of his gear. They're hopeful it turns up before the last day of camp Thursday. You have to feel for him, he's here on leave from his mandatory military service in Finland because it was so important to him to be here.
• Four of the five picks the Penguins' made at the draft in Montreal are here for camp, the exception being Russian goaltender Sergei Murashov, the Penguins' fourth-round pick. Fifth-round pick Zam Plante is here, but isn't participating in on-ice sessions. He told me he's eight weeks removed from shoulder surgery after dislocating it twice last season, first in high school hockey in December and then again in the spring in the USHL playoffs. He's expected to be sidelined until mid-October.
"I'm just kind of strengthening it a little bit so I can eventually get back out there," he told me of the rehab process. "I didn't want to have the surgery until it came out again, like you have to get the surgery done. So I got surgery right away after it came out the second time."
• By the way, Plante said he gets asked if his name is short for Zamboni "almost every day." It's not actually short for anything.
• The Penguins had two undrafted free agents on the initial development camp roster: Forward Max Sasson and defenseman Aidan Fulp, both from Western Michigan. They added several late additions to the group of undrafted invites: Goaltender Nolan Lalonde from the OHL's Erie Otters, forward Oliver Peer from the OHL's Windsor Spitfires, and forward Boston Buckberger, who will be attending the University of Wisconsin next season.
• Casey DeSmith briefly joined the other goaltenders for some goalie drills. DeSmith is in town still rehabbing from his core muscle surgery, I've seen him skating at Cranberry for a few weeks now. His presence was also a bit of a boost to the young goalies out there for camp.
"Anytime these guys come in, if young guys can be around somebody like that, especially someone that works as hard as Casey does, that's always invaluable," Forrest said. "You think you work hard until you see someone like that that's been doing that their whole career just to get the point where he's at. You're like, 'Okay, that's what it really means to work hard.'"
• Forrest, a former defensemen who played in the minor leagues and Europe, was asked about how a growth spurt like that of first-round pick defenseman Owen Pickering (who went from 5-foot-6 to 6-foot-4 in three years) might affect how a guy plays style-wise, if it might cause a player who wasn't previously a physical player now look to take advantage of his newfound size.
"I mean, I can't really relate because I think I went from 5-6 to 5-8," Forrest quipped before answering. "You know, his skating looks really good. And it's to continue to learn how to utilize that size as a tool and not forget that you have that -- especially when you have that big growth spurt -- to know that this is something I can really utilize in basically every aspect of the game. It's going to be important for him to learn how to adjust to that. But you already see it. I mean, there's a reason why he was picked where he was picked. It looks like he's on that road already."
Pickering thinks that his growth spurt helped his skating, giving him a longer stride. But it was the lessons he learned pre-growth spurt -- being mobile, shifty to evade the bigger players -- is something that has come in handy now.
"I think kind of when you're growing up and you're a smaller defenseman, you've got to be very mobile, very shifty have the ability to kind of move puck fast and quarterback a power play," he said. "Those are the successful small D-men you see. So I tried to mold my game that way when I was younger, and then I feel like I've kept some of those skills growing. So I feel like that's that's helped out. Then you kind of learn how to be a bigger body out there and use your size too."
Pickering has yet to totally fill out his frame after that growth spurt, and is still slender at 180 pounds. His focuses moving forward are just going to be maturing physically and getting stronger.
• Today's session was divided up into two parts: The first half of the day was individual work, with all of the goalies at one end working with goaltending coaches Andy Chiodo, Kain Tisi and Chuck Grant, and the skaters at the other end doing some testing and skating drills. The second session was a full practice with both sides coming together.
• Forrest led the second session for the most part. Mike Sullivan, Wilkes-Barre assistant Kevin Porter, director of player development Tom Kostopoulos, skills coach Ty Hennes, hockey operations advisor Trevor Daley, and the goalie coaches were all there to help as well. Other members of the front office, including Ron Hextall and Burke watched from the balcony above the ice.
• Earlier in the summer the Penguins promoted video coach Andy Saucier to hockey operations analyst, and assistant video coach Madison Nikkel to head video coach. The Penguins filled the assistant video coaching vacancy with another internal hire, promoting CJ D'Alimonte, who spent the last two years as Wilkes-Barre's video coach.
• Blomqvist's missing equipment isn't the only travel-related headache a prospect faced getting to Pittsburgh. Five or six different guys had lengthy delays when trying to fly here. Collins and Jordan Frasca were two of them, they suffered through the six-hour delay from Toronto on Saturday that Dejan and I both dealt with. Forward Brooklyn Kalmikov had a cancelled flight and didn't make it to Cranberry until late Sunday morning.
• This was the first time post-COVID that reporters have been allowed back int he locker room, and the impact of that can't be understated. So much better to be able to bounce around a locker room and talk to anyone you choose one-on-one than have the team select a couple of players for everyone to get at a podium.
• One interesting takeaway from being in the locker room: They're using the main team's locker room at the Lemieux Complex. Every player had their own stall with their own nameplate, except where Crosby sits. That stall remained empty with Crosby's nameplate, nobody was allowed to sit there. The Penguins had to bring in extra temporary stalls for overflow for a couple of players too, so it's not like they couldn't have used the space.
