Oilers Ready the Young Guns

Well, I hope this is what you were waiting for. I'm finally getting the Triumphant Trio onto the blog full-time and I don't think we'll be without them for quite some time now. 

Below the regular roster, we'll find the rookie roster that will be heading to Penticton, BC, the Oilers being the last team posted that is going to this tournament (Vancouver, Calgary, Anaheim and San Jose are the other four).  This team will likely have to be carried by some of its top-end talent, but fortunately, they have plenty of that to go around.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Dustin Penner	Kurtis Foster	Jeff Deslauriers
Sam Gagner	Ryan Whitney	Nikolai Khabibulin
Gilbert Brule	Tom Gilbert
Shawn Horcoff	Sheldon Souray
Ales Hemsky	Jim Vandermeer
Colin Fraser	Ladislav Smid
Zach Stortini	Taylor Chorney
Ryan Jones
J-F Jacques
Taylor Hall	Johan Motin	Bryan Pitton
Jordan Eberle	Alex Plante	Olivier Roy
Magnus Paajarvi	Jordan Bendfeld	Tyler Bunz
Philippe Cornet	Jeff Petry
Curtis Hamilton	Brandon Davidson
Cameron Abney	Jeremie Blain
Chris Vande Velde	Martin Marincin
Teemu Hartikainen	Dominik Schlumpf
Mike Thomas	Nolan Toigo
Kristians Pelss	Dallas Ehrhardt
Milan Kytnar
Ryan Martindale
Tyler Pitlick
James Livingston
Daniel Czerwonka
Chase Schaber

I don't think this camp is a real showcase for Hall, Eberle and Paajarvi as it is for some of the other guys.  Everyone will be out to see the big three, there's no question about that, but their real showcase won't come until training camp, when they have to play with the big boys.

I'll be curious to see how Teemu Hartikainen and Tyler Pitlick perform at these games, since they are on my list as players to watch.  This almost seems to be a make-it or break-it year for Alex Plante on the blueline, as he has been in the system since 2007.  The Oilers will still have to move Sheldon Souray for Plante to have a spot on the team, but Plante can really force management's hand with a great camp.  Finally, in goal, I think we'll be looking at Bryan Pitton to have a good camp, but he's behind a couple guys at the moment and some paving will need to be done to get him into the big leagues.