Tim Leone of the Patriot News was down in Washington for the opening of training camp, and this morning he's put together a nice little feature on prospect Chris Bourque:
"I'm coming here to make the team," Bourque said. "Hopefully, that can happen. If not, we'll see what happens after that. If you're going to come to an NHL camp, you might as well come to try to make the team."Bourque is considered a long shot to make the Caps' opening-night roster, but he was impressive in precamp workouts. His career trajectory is on track for him to get a chance to make his NHL regular-season debut at some point in 2007-08.
A lengthy, impression-stamping camp stint in which he makes it hard for Caps management to send him back to Hershey obviously will help the cause.
"You really just want to try to make yourself better than you were the previous season," Bourque said. "If that happens, I think I will get the [NHL] time that I deserve. I just need to focus on having a really good year."
Bourque is in a really tough spot. As we've mentioned before, the Caps are absolutely stocked with bodies at every position this season, a far cry from what the first training camp after the lockout looked like in 2005.
Unfortunately for him, even if he puts in a performance that's good enough to earn his a roster spot in Washington, that doesn't mean that he's necessarily going to be good enough to get regular minutes playing in Washington. And considering that he's still just 21, getting regular shifts in Hershey may be a better bet for his long-term development than scraping for minutes in Washington or watching games from the press box.
Then again, you never know -- as was amply demonstrated this week when we got the news that Eric Fehr, once penciled in to a lot of rosters as a second line winger on this team, failed his physical. And over the course of a long season, you just never know what might happen.
