Prospect update: U-16 camps

The summer is when the Canadian provinces start getting down to the serious part of evaluating players for the U-17 World Hockey Challenge and the Western Canada U-16 Challenge Cup. This year the U-17 World Hockey Challenge is for 1997-born players (those taken in the 2012 bantam draft) and the Western Canada U-16 Challenge Cup is for 1998-born players (those taken in this year’s bantam draft).

All four provinces have now released the player lists for their U-16 summer camps, and Everett has five draft picks who made the cut:

– Winger Tyson Jost (first round) and center Andrew Fyten (sixth round) were two of 81 players who will attend Alberta’s camp on July 2-7.

– Defenseman Alex Astasiewicz (third round) and winger Keyvan Mokhtari (seventh round) were two of 44 players invited to B.C.’s camp on July 10-14.

– Winger Kevin Jakisch (fourth round) was one of 27 players picked for Manitoba’s camp on Aug 15-18.

Twenty players will be selected for each province’s team. Lat year Everett had just two prospects who played in the event, defenseman Kevin Davis for B.C. and goaltender Mario Petit for Manitoba.

The invitees for the U-17 camps have not been announced yet.