VANCOUVER -- Ty Young may have grown up in Calgary, Alberta, but thanks to a summer spent with his grandparents on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, his favorite team was the Vancouver Canucks, making his selection by them in the fifth round (No. 144) of the 2022 NHL Draft all the more special.
The 17-year-old goalie still has the jerseys of his favorite Canucks growing up: Daniel Sedin and Roberto Luongo. So, it was a little surreal for him to be on the ice with Daniel Sedin, his twin brother Henrik and Ian Clark, the goaltending coach who worked with Luongo for four seasons from 2006-10, at Canucks development camp last month.
"It doesn't feel real," Young said. "I feel like I'm living in a dream. It's a crazy feeling to be able to just look across the ice and there they are, or when they sat and had dinner with us. It's not like they're like so far away anymore on the TV screen. You're actually talking to them."
The Sedin brothers provided the star power -- and the obvious temptation to ask for an autograph -- but it was Clark who gave the biggest ego boost to the 6-foot-3 goalie, who did not attend the draft in Montreal because he was worried that he wouldn't be selected despite rising from No. 21 on NHL Central Scouting's midseason ranking of North American goalies to No. 6 when the final rankings were released.
Clark said the Canucks ranked Young atop their list of available goalies, with the one caveat being that they look more for raw skill and other physical, competitive and coachable attributes. Translation: There's still work to do on his game.
"He's one of the rare Canadian wild horses," Clark said. "I've used that term before referring to Eastern European goalies that have underlying talent, but aren't yet over-programed structurally, and I think he falls into that category.
"He has a lot of those underlying elements we believe are the crown jewels of [that] position and now that he's in our stable we have an opportunity to really get to work on some of those other more tangible elements."
Last season, Young started with Calgary -- aptly named the Canucks -- in the Alberta Junior Hockey League, going 4-10-3 with a .918 save percentage and one shutout. He finished the season with Prince George of the Western Hockey League and was 6-9-3 with a .899 save percentage in 23 regular-season games.
As he continues his development, Young is embracing what he has already learned from Clark, who along with Luongo has worked with two-time Vezina Trophy winner Sergei Bobrovsky, then with the Columbus Blue Jackets (2011-19), and both current Calgary Flames goalie Jacob Markstrom in 2019-20 and Thatcher Demko in Vancouver.
"When I first got here, he brought up my ego a little but once we got on the ice it kind of went back down," said Young, who studied footage of Demko last season to try and incorporate some of his technique. "He's a crazy good goalie coach and he's got an awesome pedigree, so I'm just trying to take everything in and hopefully I can become a better goalie."
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