The most recent arrival is defenseman Roland McKeown, who the Carolina Hurricanes obtained from the Los Angeles Kings in a February trade involving Andrej Sekera. With his junior team, the Kingston Frontenacs, eliminated in the first round of the Ontario Hockey League playoffs last week, McKeown has the opportunity to at least practice with the Checkers. He could possibly do more.
“He might get a chance to play, we’ll see, but he’s got another year of junior left,” said Checkers coach Jeff Daniels, citing rules that prevent an OHL draft pick as young as McKeown, who turned 19 in January, from starting next season in the AHL. “He’s new to the system based on the in-season trade and he’s a guy we’re still trying to get a feel for, but he’s a guy that Carolina scouted over the years and a guy they liked.”
“I’m just take every day as it comes,” said McKeown, who took the ice with the Checkers for the first time Monday morning after arriving the previous night. “There’s five games left and we’ll see – I’m just going to be ready to play every day and we’ll go from there.”
Helping McKeown’s case to get in the lineup is the timing of his arrival, which comes late in a non-playoff season with stakes relatively lowered, and also during an unusually long period of off time. The seven days between Friday’s win over Oklahoma City and Saturday’s game against Rockford, which started with a weekend off and will continue with five full practice days, mark the Checkers’ longest break between games all season – longer than the holiday break and longer than the All-Star break.
Since McKeown has not been to a Hurricanes rookie camp or training camp, unlike the prospects that preceded him, that extra time to settle in should come as an advantage.
Going into Monday, McKeown was just one of a staggering nine defensemen on the Charlotte roster, all of whom were healthy. Since that practice, the team released pro tryout Mike Cornell and reassigned Austin Levi to ECHL Stockton, bringing the number down to seven including McKeown and fellow 19-year-old junior tryout Josh Wesley. Brett Pesce missed practice to take an exam at the University of New Hampshire but planned to return Tuesday.
If he does play, something that seems more likely now with Cornell and Levi gone, McKeown will be hoping to emulate the solid debut of Pesce, who received the opportunity to play extensively in all situations and picked up his first professional point, an assist on Friday, to boot.
“Right away got thrown into a top-four pair and playing against top lines, power play and PK,” said Daniels of Pesce, who is eligible to start next season in the AHL. “He has a good feel for the game and is a guy that’s looking to make that good first pass all the time. I thought for the first few games pro that he did a real good job.”
Other late additions still in the fold include Wesley and goaltender Rasmus Tirronen. After he briefly joined the Checkers last week, the Hurricanes assigned 19-year-old netminder Alex Nedeljkovic to the ECHL’s Florida Everblades, where he won one of two games over the weekend.
It remains to be seen if McKeown would get the same kind of opportunity as Pesce, but the Hurricanes, as evidenced by the trade, clearly have high hopes for the Kings’ second-round pick in 2014. Since that trade, which McKeown was shocked to learn of while taking warmups for a Frontenacs game that night, he’s kept in touch with the Hurricanes’ Ron Francis, Glen Wesley and Mike Velluci about honing small parts of a game they already liked.
“They say he’s just a solid defender and good character guy that’s the captain of his junior team at a young age, which is pretty impressive,” said Daniels of McKeown, who also captained Canada’s World U18 team. “He’s a guy that plays against top lines and plays big minutes.”
McKeown, who finished his third junior season with 32 points (7g, 25a) in 65 games, said he will spend the long week of practice getting to know several players he’s played against in the OHL, including Checkers rookies Trevor Carrick, Brock McGinn and Carter Sandlak. He’ll also be taking the advice of others who have done a similar late-season audition, such as McGinn, who played Calder Cup Playoff games as a 19-year old in 2013.
“Everyone says that experience is good to get in before summer so you get that inspiration and see where you need to get to,” said McKeown. “That’s what I’m here for – to develop.”
If playing games ends up being a part of that experience, he seems up to the challenge.
“They’ve seen me play a lot and they traded for me, so I’m just going to try to keep going with what they’ve seen,” he said.
