Development camp: 'Coach's dream' Ansons brings strong defensive play

CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The Penguins' prospects are set up in the main NHL locker room for this week's development camp at the Lemieux Complex, and two things in the locker room have carried over from the NHL season.

First, Sidney Crosby's locker stall remains his locker stall. It's empty with his own nameplate still in its usual place above the stall. No prospects are sitting in Crosby's spot this week.

Second, a Latvian forward with a strong defensive game is still sitting to the right of Crosby's locker as usual.

No, Teddy Blueger isn't at Penguins development camp. But his countryman Raivis Ansons -- who has a lot of similarities to Blueger on the ice -- is fittingly sitting in Blueger's usual spot.

I asked Ansons if anyone from the Penguins' staff had told him whose locker he was using yet. When I told him it was Blueger's, he broke into a big smile and looked around his stall like he was seeing it for the first time.

"Really? That's awesome," he said.

Ansons doesn't know Blueger too well yet, the first time the two met was at the Penguins' training camp last season. That was the first time Ansons had ever played or practiced with a fellow Latvian since he moved to North America three seasons ago, and it had him thinking about what it might be like to be teammates with Blueger for real one day.

"It'd be awesome, actually, really cool if the two of us can maybe play together one day," he told me. "It'd be really cool."

Ansons, a 20-year-old winger, was the Penguins' fifth-round pick in 2020, after a season in which he scored 13 goals and 22 assists in 60 games with the QMJHL's Baie-Comeau Drakkar. He split the following season between his native Latvia and Baie-Comeau as a result of COVID delaying the start of the QMJHL season, then returned to Baie-Comeau this past season for his final season of junior hockey.

Teams in the QMJHL have a limited number of sports for import players from Europe, and it's a competitive market to acquire those players. There are only so many teams that are legitimate contenders in the league, and each one can only have two imports on their roster. After a start to the season in which Ansons scored six goals and 18 assists in 19 games for Baie-Comeau, all while playing a solid, two-way game, other teams in the QMJHL started seeking his services.

The Saint John Sea Dogs acquired Ansons in a January trade that sent a player, two second-round picks and a third-round pick to the Drakkar. Saint John was already a contender for the Memorial Cup, the annual tournament between the champions of the OHL, WHL and QMJHL leagues. Saint John was the host city for this year's tournament and had an automatic bid as the fourth team. Knowing that they were going to be part of the tournament, the Sea Dogs were loading up their roster at midseason in preparation, and Sea Dogs president and general manager Trevor Georgie thought that Ansons was just the type of player he needed on a championship roster.

“Raivis, when we acquired him, we thought that he was one of the best -- if not the best -- two-way forwards,” Georgie told me of that trade on Tuesday. “He's reliable, dependable, and contributes offensively, contributes defensively. He's a coach's dream. We got all that and more when we traded for him."

Ansons continued to contribute offensively down the stretch of the regular season for Saint John, scoring 12 goals and 24 assists in the last 37 games of the season. Saint John was eliminated in the first round of the QMJHL playoffs, and sat idle for a month-plus until the start of the Memorial Cup.

As the host team, the Sea Dogs were widely regarded as the underdog of the tournament, going up against the champions from the three different leagues. Ansons, though, said that the team didn't think of themselves that way. 

"We didn't really focus on what anybody else thinks," he said. "We just tried to get a little better every day."

Ansons and the Sea Dogs went on to defeat the OHL champion Hamilton Bulldogs in the Memorial Cup Final by a score of 6-3. Ansons scored one goal and four assists in the four games of the tournament. His goal came against the WHL champion Edmonton Oil Kings in round robin play:

Ansons had three primary assists in Saint John's first game of the tournament against the QMJHL champion Shawinigan Cataractes:

"We just came out ready to play," Ansons told me. "We were prepared for it and it went our way."

Ansons' offensive contributions were significant, but Georgie told me that that production was "really not the point" for Ansons in the playoffs. It was his consistency and responsible play that proved to be the most beneficial when the stakes of the games were elevated.

"He's just so reliable," Georgie said. "He makes all the right plays, makes simple plays. He's consistent. ... He's not going to do anything erratic. He's going to do everything hard. He's going to win puck battles. He's going to chip pucks in. He's going to not lose his check. He's going to make you feel very comfortable. And there's something to be said for that."

Georgie compared Ansons to a can of Coke: "It's the same last year, it's the same taste in a month from now, and in two, three years from now it's going to taste the same. Just consistent. There's something comforting in consistency and bringing that consistent effort."

Ansons was recognized for his strong defensive game during the season, winning the award for the Sea Dogs' top defensive forward in the regular season. That strong defensive play hasn't always been one of the strengths of Ansons' game, though It's something he's added to his arsenal more recently, and now feels like a natural part of his game.

"I think that just came just a couple years ago," he said. "That was the first time that I got an award like that, as a defensive forward. I don't really think about playing that way, but it's just kind of comes. It feels good."

Georgie also praised Ansons' ability to just fit seamlessly into any locker room. Ansons is on the quieter side, a man of few words. Down the stretch of the Sea Dogs' season, Ansons' teammates would be clamoring for a speech from him in the locker room. Ansons would stand up and say something brief like "We did well, let's go boys!" and Georgie said that "guys would be going crazy" in the room just because Ansons spoke up.

The Sea Dogs enjoyed Ansons' work ethic and personality so much -- things Georgie said he believes are just part of the Latvian culture -- that they actively sought out other Latvian players in the last import draft.

Ansons will be turning pro next season and will likely start the year in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton . It won't be his first time in northeastern Pennsylvania. Ansons was in Wilkes-Barre at the start of the 2020-21 season for training camp, something he was able to do because of the QMJHL season starting later than normal. He made a good impression on coach J.D. Forrest then, and Forrest is expecting to see much of the same from Ansons next season.

"He works really hard," Forrest told me. "I think he's committed to some of those hard areas of the ice, he's been really good on the penalty kill I hear from juniors this year. And it's always great when you see one of our guys win a championship, the Memorial Cup is not an easy one to win. You have that pedigree back there. You'd like to think that that's going to carry over somewhat."

Ansons is going to look to continue to be that responsible, defensive forward next year at the pro level. But there's one big part of his game that he wants to focus on more than others at the pro level.

"Scoring some goals," he said. "Scoring more goals. That's what I want in pro more. I want to grow that offensive side."

Usually players who are selected in the fifth-round are more than a long-shot to make it to the NHL. But for someone like Ansons, who is so strong defensively and predictable, he feels like a real Mike Sullivan-type player, and could prove to be a steal for his draft position.

"Pittsburgh got him in the fifth round? That's a hell of a pick," Georgie told me of Ansons. "A guy like that, to get that late? You'd be hard-pressed to find a coach that would have anything bad to say about Raivis. Everyone would love him. ... He could play on a bottom six on an NHL team for 10 years and make a great career of it."

MORE FROM CAMP

• Casey DeSmith was again on the ice for practice with the prospect goalies to start the day. He's been in town since the season ended and has been skating most mornings here for the last several weeks.

• Goaltender Filip Lindberg didn't practice today in any of the sessions. He didn't have a setback, today was just a schedule day off. He's continuing to rehab from his ankle injury and the team is taking the rehab process slowly.

• Forward Zam Plante, who is expected to be rehabbing from his shoulder surgery until sometime in October, watched all of the sessions from the bench.

• Today followed the same format as yesterday. A goalie session to start, followed by a skills development session with skills coach Ty Hennes for the skaters, while the goalies continued to work at the other end of the ice. The day again concluded with a split-squad session.

• Wilkes-Barre assistant coach (and former Penguins forward) Kevin Porter worked with a group of skaters on some net-front drills, mostly deflections. There was also a portion where there was a barrier meant to simulate a goaltender's pad, and they'd work on recovering a rebound and roofing it straight into the net.

• By the way, I asked undrafted free agent invite Max Sasson if he has any plans to sing the anthem before a game in the near future -- perhaps before the development camp scrimmage -- after he did so before a USHL game:

"I mean, I would do it again" he laughed. "I'm not saying no."

It'd be quite a way to leave an impression on the last day of development camp.

• The players bused over to the Rooney Sports Complex after practice to play flag football. First-round pick Owen Pickering is pretty funny, I'm not entirely sure he has any future as a football player. Sasson might be able to be a fifth-string kicker, though: