Barkey's coach in December:
“I think his edges and his agility laterally have really taken another big step this year. I mean, they were already good but he has done more work on it in the summer and now he’s got this little juke move he can do from forehand to backhand in the neutral zone and then use his lateral agility to get away from guys,” Simpson said. “His skating and his separation speed and east-west agility (have) really taken another step. And then that kind of goes hand-in-hand with his playmaking and his ability to get pucks.”
“The nice thing with Denver is you can put him in any role really that you want,” Simpson said. “Do you want him to play in a skill, top-six role? You can play him with other talented players and he’s got the speed and the hockey sense and the poise that you want. You want him to play in the bottom six? He’s got that too … It’s ‘you want me to play top-line wing? I can do that. You want me to play fourth-line wing and check and kill penalties? I can do that.'”
Bonk:
“He’s a player when he was younger that sometimes I think you can misjudge a little bit because he’s got exceptional hockey sense and what he needed to work on was putting the body and the feet to add to the product so that that hockey sense could play out more and he could use it more on the ice,” Simpson said. “He has grown (now 6-foot-2 and 179 pounds) and turned into a man, now the skills and the athletic ability are coming together which, when you combine that with the hockey sense that he has, it just makes the game a lot easier for him out there because he can read everything before most players and now he’s able to move some pucks with his feet and get out of danger.
Barkey and Bonk are both just 18, vying to make Team Canada's world juniors roster — a team that traditionally fills up with 19-year-olds.
theathletic.com