Gaudet excited to be at first WHL camp

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
The excitement fairly leaps from Brady Gaudet’s eyes. His smile is larger than all outdoors.
“It’s crazy,” he said, “but I’m loving it. Just watching these guys out there. . . . I’m very excited.”
The 5-foot-11, 163-pound Gaudet, the Kamloops Blazers’ first pick, 10th overall, in the WHL’s 2009 bantam draft, is enjoying his first WHL training camp. A defenceman from Redvers, Sask., he took part in his first on-ice workout and scrimmage Friday, the opening day of camp, at Interior Savings Centre.
Because he is only 15, Gaudet knows he won’t play here this season; in fact, he plans on joining the midget AAA Tisdale, Sask., Trojans, the team with which his older brother, Craig, won the 2002 Air Canada Cup as national champions.
“Since I was a little guy . . . we always went and watched them,” Brady said, “and I always thought it would be cool to play there.”
Craig, 24, is going into his senior year as a defenceman with the St. Cloud, Minn., State Huskies. Before heading south, though, he played for the BCHL’s Nanaimo Clippers.
“He told me how nice it is here,” said Brady, who also has a sister, Shanlee, 21, at the U of Saskatchewan. “I’ve heard a lot of good things from players around home that this is a pretty good place to play. I’m looking forward to it.”
Last spring, he was looking forward to the bantam draft, although he didn’t know that he would be a first-round pick.
“I was obviously hoping,” said Gaudet, who had 36 points in 25 games with the bantam AA Moose Mountain Wild, which plays out of Carlyle, Sask. “It was my first year in bantam AA so I didn’t know. I was talking to teams throughout the winter. I talked to Kamloops and they projected that maybe . . .”
On the big day, Craig called their mother, Cathy, with the news and she got Brady out of class.
“I was pretty excited,” Brady said. “It was pretty big deal at our school.”
Gaudet — it’s French and pronounced g’day — prepared for his first WHL camp by doing a lot of skating in Whitewood, Sask., at sessions arranged by Brad McEwan, the Medicine Hat Tigers’ head scout. Gaudet, then, has been skating with WHL, NCAA and junior A players for a lot of the summer.
Asked to describe himself as a player, Gaudet replies: “(I’m) kind of an offensive defenceman. When I can, I rush the puck. If I can’t, I’ll make the simple pass.
“I can play physical when I have to; if it’s there, I’ll make a big hit but I won’t go out of my way to do it.”
Gaudet would like nothing better than to follow in the strides of Redvers native Dean Kennedy, who played for the Brandon Wheat Kings and Saskatoon Blades before going on to a 717-game NHL career. A physical defenceman, Kennedy and Brady’s father, Alain, were classmates in Redvers.
JUST NOTES: The Blazers opened camp with 94 players on hand. . . . Trainer/equipment manager Colin (Toledo) Robinson is back with the Blazers despite hearing from two AHL teams over the summer. The Abbotsford Heat gave him a call and, just this week, he heard from the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. . . . The Tigers are affiliated with Robinson’s favourite NHL team, the New York Islanders. . . . Only two players off the Blazers’ original training camp roster failed to put in an appearance. G Evan Roch, a 17-year-old from Victoria, and LW Aspen Sterzer, 15, from Canal Flats, cancelled out. . . . The Blazers, along with every other CHL team, will unveil new jerseys one of these days. They’ll be from Reebok and should be available for sale in mid-September. . . . G Jacob Mattes, 16, and D Zach Tjader, 16, both products of the Kamloops Minor Hockey Association, are on the rookie camp roster of the Tri-City Americans. Tjader, however, is in camp with the Blazers.

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnnan.blogspot.com