A couple of weekends ago, Detroit Red Wings assistant coaches Todd McLellan and Paul MacLean hosted a youth hockey camp at Joe Louis Arena. Over 300 kids between the ages of 7 and 14 attended the weekend camp.
"Everyone is having a great time and we have a number of kids that have attended before," said Detroit’s Youth Hockey Group Sales manager Kristan Hubbard. "It’s a great experience coming down and skating at the home of the Red Wings."
The camp provides participants with on-ice tutelage from Red Wings assistant coaches Paul MacLean and Todd McLellan, goaltender coach Jim Bedard and a host of youth minor hockey coaches and counselors. Red Wings trainers Piet Van Zant and Russ Baumann, along with fitness instructors from Triad Performance and Training Center assisted in dry land training.
McLellan said giving back to the Michigan youth hockey community is very important to himself and MacLean.
"It’s an exciting time to see a lot of smiling faces on the ice," said McLellan. "Paul and I have an obligation to give back to the minor hockey people. We had it pretty good growing up and we had the opportunity to attend camps like this so this gives us a chance to give back and were excited about that."
Not only did the kids get to learn from some great instructors, they also got to tour the Wings locker room (where they could take a photo in front of their favorite player's locker) and they all were given a camp jersey, tickets to the GLI college tournament, a bag with goodies, and a "certificate of participation" given by Wings play by play announcer Ken Kal upon the conclusion of the camp. Parents were able to tour the rest of the Joe.
It's nice to see the Wings reach out and do an event like this to help instruct the future generation of hockey players.
I actually was supposed to cover that event for Michigan Hockey (the publication this blockquote was taken from), but my final German class project prevented me from doing so. Sounds like I missed a fun event for those kids!