By Dan Marshall

Summer still busy for Nanaimo’s junior hockey teams

Jun 2, 2017 | 10:21 AM

NANAIMO — It may be June but both junior hockey teams in the city are hard at work on building their squads for the fall.
 
The Nanaimo Clippers have had a flurry of player commitments over the past two weeks.
 
GM and coach Mike Vandekamp has added forwards Preston Brodziak, Holdyn Lansink, Lucas Vanroboys, and Brad Belisle.
 
He also added defenseman Collin Heinold.
 
All of these players are in their 18 or 19-year-old junior seasons, and Vandekamp says his roster for the 2017-18 campaign will be a youthful one.
 
“I think it’s a trend in the game in general. Even in the National Hockey League teams are being led by their younger players in a lot of cases,” said Vandekamp. “In our league the young players are getting snapped up so quickly. This year we’ve lost eight players to the NCAA who all had eligibility to return to junior hockey and last summer was no different.”
 
The Buccaneers held their spring camp last weekend and new head coach Curtis Toneff was able to commit to several local players.
 
Goalie Blake Wood, defenseman Mattias Dal Monte, and forward Will Norman are all Nanaimo products.
 
Forward Wyatt Selva is from Port Alberni and defenseman Lucas Patton is out of Sechelt.
 
Toneff says the Buccaneers philsophy is to utilize as much local talent as possible.
 
“We consider guys from Port Alberni, towards Nanoose, Duncan even – we consider that local,” Toneff said. “I thought it was important for us to up our numbers locally.  At the end of the day I think guys play harder if their playing for basically their local squad.” 
 
Over the years the Clippers and Buccaneers have worked together on developing some players as well.
 
Last year for example goalie Cedric LeSieur was a cut from the Clippers camp who played for the Bucs, forward Danny Pion spent time on both rosters, and Julius Zhang was a Buccaneers defenseman who was also a Clippers affiliate player.
 
Several more player commitments at the Junior A and Junior B level will be coming out in the next few weeks. 
 

dan@nanaimonewsnow.com

On twitter: @danmarshall77