Cam York is one of the Flyers top prospects, and he made his long anticipated professional debut last night. His debut got off to a shaky start as expected, everyone had to expect some rust from him as he hasn’t played a game in 5 weeks or so, “You ask any hockey player and it seems like once you get out of your routine it is a really tough situation,” York said following the game. “As a hockey player, everything is about having a schedule and a certain routine. When you get thrown out of that for five weeks or whatever it was. It almost felt like I had a little offseason there. It’s just a weird situation to go from playing games at Michigan to having that break and then having to ramp it up again especially at the professional level.”
Early into the first period, York flubbed a pass, thus Hershey took of advantage of this turnover and potted the first goal of the night. The one good thing that fans saw from York in the first period was him seeing time on the top Power Play Unit. I wonder if Chuck Fletcher put a bug in Phantoms Head Coach Scott Gordon’s ear about him seeing time on the Power Play. The Flyers top brass are hoping that he is able to quarterback the Power Play of the orange and black for year’s to come.
The young 20-year-old in York did provide some nice plays with the man advantage though. For instance, York used his good instincts to keep a puck in Hershey’s zone to extend the Power Play, which lead to a prime scoring chance.
York finished the game with a -2, and he registered one shot on net. Yes, it wasn’t the debut Phantoms fans nor Flyers fans were hoping for, but it is very difficult to play a professional game for the first time in five weeks with little practice time, and ramping up time in particular (Due to the Covid-19 protocol the team endured). York however appeared to be a slight sluggish skating wise, but his gap control was pretty good for the most part. There were times opponents had some space to create, but I thought York did well in this area.
As stated above I was impressed with how efficiently York moved the puck on the Power Play. With little practice time of knowing where the team’s personnel was going to be and when, he actually did quite well. York quarterbacked Michigan’s top Power Play Unit this past season, and that definitely helped in this case.
Truth be told, let’s see how York does on Saturday. He should continue to improve as the season wears on. The sky is the limit for this young 20-year-old in York.
York went way too high in his draft year. He was a late second to mid third round pick at best. He’s way too small to ever have much of a career in the NHL. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great 18 year old, but that’s where his story ends. He’s just a pint sized defenseman and his stick is even about the size of one of those souvenir sized collectibles you buy at a Wells Fargo stand, during a game. Sadly, York was a Chuck Fletcher first round mistake. Alex Newhouse went right after York to Colorado. He was the right pick. Newhouse was there for the picking, but Fletcher is not very good at the draft as we saw while he was GM with Minnesota.
This is a joke, correct?