Prospect Weekly: Lost and Found

While it was disappointing that Igor Shvyryov wasn’t invited to the Canada Russia Series, he was competing for the Russian national team last week at the Four Nations tournament held in mother Russia. This is another prelude to the World Junior Championship and it’s upcoming selection camps. In the silver medal  game against a Finland team which will look pretty familiar at the WJC, Shvyroy was instrumental in securing the 2-0 win for Russia by contributing a goal and assist as shown below. The assist was an incredible individual effort to strip the puck and perfectly time the cross-ice pass plus on his own goal previous to that Shvyryov showed off the quick wrist shot he possesses. Hopefully this performance was enough to convince Russian officials to bring him over to North America for the WJC, which will begin on December 26th in Buffalo, NY.

Dominic Toninato continues to quietly impress in the AHL. He kicked off the week with a pair of gorgeous assists on goals scored by Julien Nantel. The second of which came off of a fantastic individual effort on a faceoff as seen below. The duo was rewarded for their efforts by having promising Blues rookie Klim Kostin moved off their line in favor of Joe Colborne. Toninato is tied for fifth in team scoring with six points and is doing most of it at even strength and with not a lot of premium ice time. He’s certainly making the most of his time in San Antonio and is primed for a look in Colorado for the Avalanche when the need arises.

Elsewhere in San Antonio, Spencer Martin has put his game back on track after a disasterous end to the 2016-17 season. In eight games Martin has posted a 6-1 record with a 1.93 GAA and .934 SV% and one shutout, all of which places him in the top five in the league. On Monday the AHL agreed that Martin has been outstanding and named him the player of the week after posting a 2-0 record with 0.50 GAA and .986 SV% over the weekend.

Nick Henry returned from injury as expected over the weekend and while he didn’t produce any points in a pair of low scoring games for the Regina Pats, he did manage to generate 10 shots on goal in the two contests. Henry looked good physically even if his timing was a bit off in certain aspects. It’s certainly great to see him back on the ice after such a long recovery. In other Pats news, the team began making moves for their Memorial Cup run with the acquisition of Montreal Canadiens prospect defenseman Cale Fleury with more trades surely on the horizon as they approach the trade deadline in January.

For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Boston University (Bowers) visits Maine at 5:30pm MT on Saturday, November 18th. The game can be seen on Fox College Sports.