On-ice sessions for the Edmonton Oilers Rookie Camp commence on Friday the 10th, but players have begun trickling in over the last several days. Among the newest arrivals is Sudbury Wolves captain Zack Stortini, whose plane touched down in Oiltown on Wednesday afternoon. It’s a trip that the towering winger has been long anticipating.
“I’ve been so excited for this, I just hope everything gets resolved with the CBA so I can go to the main camp but other than that, I just look forward to coming out to Edmonton every year now,” said the 6’4.5” 225 lb Stortini. “Even though I’ve only been there for a couple of weeks at a time, I’ve really enjoyed it both on and off the ice.”
Stortini first appeared in
Almost directly from the Prospect Camp, Stortini went to
“I think I made a huge improvement my first
summer,” he said. “(
The hard work paid off and during the 2003-04 OHL season, Stortini was named in the top three positions of both the Hardest Worker and Most Improved Player categories of the annual Coaches’ Poll.
“The area Zack has worked really hard on in the last two years has been his skating and in that area I would say that Zack would maybe go down as the most improved in all of junior hockey,” Scott Norton, his agent, told Hockey’s Future recently. “When he came into the OHL his skating was something that people said ‘he has all the tools if only his feet could get him there’ but now I don’t think people look at him and think that he’s a bad skater. He’s got good hands that people probably didn’t recognize as much the year before because his feet didn’t allow him to get into the places to use his hands.”
Stortini was back in
“I really enjoy working with Liane Davis, I just can’t say enough about how great she’s been for me,” Stortini beamed. “This past summer we really worked on my lateral motion with turns and pivots and things like that. I think it’s a situation now where you really have to look closer to see the details of my improvement but I think that it’s definitely still there. There’s still a long way to go, it’s not something that two years of power skating is going to do it for me, I have to continue to work hard at it. I’m a big guy and so it’s something that I’m always going to have to work on.”
Hard work and Stortini are anything but
strangers. As a terrific epilogue
to a solid year with
“(Zack) played and
he played well; he was probably one of our best players in the playoffs!”
Head Coach Geoff Ward commented this summer. “He’s got big size, huge
heart, he leaves everything on the ice for you every shift, he’s got no
fear, goes to the net with reckless abandon, loves to knock guys around on the forecheck and he’s pretty tough to move from in front
of the net too.”
If it sounds like
Ward was impressed, it’s because he was.
“He’s
got another year of junior but, boy oh boy, to be able to see him a year down
the road, after his performance in the playoffs for us last year, is pretty
exciting,” he continued.
“His skating has improved a tremendous amount since we saw at training
camp last year with the Oilers, his confidence level certainly has improved,
and I think that knowing he can come to the AHL and perform at that level it
should spring board him into a big year in junior. He’s a guy who everyone in the
organization is excited about based on how he played for us in the
playoffs.”
For his part,
Stortini says the experience with the pro club was every bit he hoped it could
be.
“It’s not every day that you get a chance to play pro hockey and see the lifestyle so getting to play five games with the Roadrunners, which was such a class organization, was a great opportunity,” Stortini said. “It definitely was a good experience and I was very fortunate to play. I just worked as hard as I could each and every shift and the coaching staff and the players welcomed me with open arms and really made sure I was adjusting well to the situation.”
After some prodding, Stortini admits that he’s eyeing the same opportunity again this year too.
“Obviously I hope to go as far as we can with the Sudbury Wolves because, especially playing in my hometown, I’d like to make a run at the Memorial Cup and I don’t think that with the team we have this year that that is out of reach,” he began. “That said, if something happens where our season wraps up before theirs does, that would be something I would enjoy, to be able to play for them again.”
When Hockey’s
Future interviewed Stortini in November of 2003, the
“I kind of did I guess, I was trying to be as straight forward as possible and was just trying to get things going,” he said trying to dodge the topic. “We had a great team last year and the core guys coming back this year and that playoff experience from last year should make us that much better this year.”
However, when pressed on the subject a bit more, Stortini far from regrets the tactic and believes it’s in his job description to stick his neck on the line to inspire his club.
“Well when word gets out you really have the pressure on you to perform and I think that is something that’s part of my job,” he admitted. “I’m counted on to contribute offensively and I’m glad that I got the opportunity to do so for my team. It’s important to make sure the guys work hard every night and our coach does a great job of keeping everybody motivated. Mike Foligno is a very demanding guy and he pushes us hard every day of game and practice. I think every once in a while, as captain of the team and especially for the younger guys, I have to give them another perspective too.”
As his agent, you might think Norton would have winced when he heard his client making such a bold prediction but in this case he was all smiles.
“For a young man to put that much on himself and to believe in himself and his team so much I think is great, just as long as players aren’t doing it every week,” Norton said. “Zack felt that it was a young team and that if he went out and did that they would believe in him and themselves more than anything. It’s not for the public or for the other team, it’s for your own team to know that you have belief in them and so they have to believe too.”
Not only were the Wolves victorious in the game but also Stortini recorded an assist on the game-tying goal and then notched the eventual winner in double overtime.
“I think that as an athlete you have to be confident in order to be successful and it’s great that everything worked out that night,” Stortini said.
The bold call might have rubbed some people the wrong way, they may have called it grandstanding or showboating, but one thing you could never do is describe Stortini as dumb.
“People watch him play and they see this mammoth kid who’s probably as tough as anybody his age in the world, and you tend to think of guys who fit that role as maybe not being the sharpest knives in the drawer, but Zack’s a very intelligent kid both in how he picks up the game as well as worldly.”
Stortini has been awarded for his scholastic achievements for the past several years and it’s an aspect of life that he takes great pride in. If it rebukes the stereotype of a hockey tough guy being a mindless drone, then so be it.
“For the past three years I’ve been the Academic Player of the Year for the Sudbury Wolves and the year before that I was the Scholastic Player of the Year for New Market,” Stortini said. “I’ve always done really well in school and I think I’m both academically smart and also just smart in general too. I do think it’s important to come across as well educated because that is something that is very important nowadays. It certainly makes it easier to communicate with people off the ice.”
On the ice Stortini is one of the most feared heavy weights in the OHL but with 21 goals last year, there is clearly more he can do with his hands than curl them into fists. Even so, fighting certainly isn’t an aspect of the sport that Stortini dislikes either.
“No, I enjoy it and think it’s a great part of the game and something that has to be done, it’s and essential part of hockey and something I enjoy doing.”
“He was probably the toughest kid in the OHL last year if not in all of major junior hockey,” suggested Norton.
Another client of Scott Norton’s
recently joined the organization as well and Stortini is very familiar Rob
Schremp because they have spent the last few summers training together in
“It’s
good to go out there with Zack every year, I’m good buddies with him and
we go golfing and stuff,” said Schremp. “I’ve known him since I was
about 14, we have the same agent too.”
Asked to describe
Stortini’s persona on the ice, Schremp got right to the point.
“He’s a tough kid, man!” he said sternly. “He finishes his checks and plays hard and he competes so that’s definitely the kind of player you want on your team and you don’t want to play against him.”
Stortini eloquently returned the compliments Schremp’s
way when the
“I’ve spent the past few summers with him and we really work well together,” he began. “(Schremp’s) a very skilled forward and on the ice he’s probably one of the most gifted players I’ve ever seen but I’ve also gotten the opportunity to spend a lot of time with him off the ice too. Everybody gives him the bad rap for being cocky and stuff like that but I know him to be a really good-hearted kid and I get really disappointed when I see stuff written like that about him. Once you get to know him he’s not a bad kid at all, he’s a really good guy.”
“We’ve gotten pretty close I guess but in the
end, we’re still bitter rivals because he plays for
After the rookie camp in
“It was nice to make the playoffs again; we had a rough year the year before so it was definitely a stepping stone,” he said. “This year we’re expecting that much more now that we’ve established a foundation for the team and we’re looking to do even better and set that bar a little higher by hopefully making a run for the Memorial Cup.”
When asked who he expected the dominant teams in the OHL’s Eastern Conference to be, the captain wouldn’t allow for any other answer than the one you might expect.
“I’d have to say that we’re looking really good right now,” he persisted. “We had a really solid training camp and we have a great bunch of new kids coming in with a strong core of guys from last year so I think we’re going to have a really strong team this year. There are a lot of good teams out there but I don’t think we’re too concerned with what they are doing, we’re just worried about ourselves and what we have to do to win every night.”
First things first though for Zack Stortini, in the next few days he will be completely focused on making further impressions on the Edmonton Oilers and what better way to do that then by sinking his teeth into the Calgary Flames on Monday night?
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