NHL scouts eying Amadio, Wood
NORTH BAY, Ont. – Mike Amadio and Kyle Wood of the North Bay Battalion have drawn the attention of National Hockey League scouts.
Centre Amadio is rated 56th among North American-based skaters in midseason rankings released Monday by the league’s central scouting department in advance of the 2014 NHL Draft, to be held June 27-28 at Philadelphia.
Defenceman Wood, who made his Ontario Hockey League season debut Dec. 28 after suffering a knee injury in training camp, is listed as having received limited viewing and thus is not yet rated.
Amadio, who turns 18 on May 13, has scored eight goals and earned a team-leading 21 assists for 29 points in 43 games this season, second in Battalion scoring. He saw a career-high six-game points streak ended Sunday night in a 3-2 victory over the visiting Kingston Frontenacs.
Amadio, a Sault Ste. Marie native who was the Battalion’s second-round pick in the 2012 OHL Priority Selection, registered six goals and 13 assists for 19 points in 63 games primarily on left wing as a rookie a year ago, when the Troops were based in Brampton.
“It’s a great feeling, obviously,” said Amadio. “Just to be ranked that high is a great honour.”
Said Amadio: “The coaches and some of the older guys on the team have gone through it when it was their turn, so the advice they’ve been giving me has been working.”
Wood, who turns 18 on May 4, has one assist in eight games this season after recording one goal and one assist for two points in 16 OHL games in 2012-13, when he played 46 games with the junior A Orangeville Flyers.
A resident of Waterloo, Ont., Wood was a third-round pick in the 2012 OHL Priority Selection. He qualifies as a rookie this year, as the threshold for losing rookie status is 17 games in a season.
Kingston centre Sam Bennett, currently sidelined with a groin injury, is ranked No. 1 among 210 North American-based skaters. There are seven OHL skaters among the top 11, including third-rated Aaron Ekblad, the top defenceman, of the Barrie Colts, who visit the Battalion at 7 p.m. Thursday.
In total, there are 53 OHLers on the list of North American-based skaters and seven OHL goaltenders among 34 in the appropriate ranking.
The central scouting department issues separate rankings for skaters and goaltenders, both broken down into North American- and European-based lists.
Players are first-time eligible for the NHL Draft in the year in which they turn 18, unless they were born Sept. 16 or later, in which case they must wait until the following year.
Current Battalion players who were drafted off the club’s roster in Brampton are defenceman Dylan Blujus, a second-round pick by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2012, and centre Nick Paul, selected by the Dallas Stars in the fourth round in 2013. Defenceman Miles Liberati and left winger Ben Thomson were drafted by the Vancouver Canucks and New Jersey Devils respectively before joining the Troops this season via trades.
Forty of the top players in the Canadian Hockey League, as selected by the 30 NHL teams, are to participate in the BMO CHL-NHL Top Prospects Game at Calgary on Wednesday night. The game is to be televised live nationally by Sportsnet starting at 9 p.m. ET. The CHL is made up of the OHL, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and Western Hockey League.
