I was at the late practices yesterday and while I'm hardly the greatest judge of talent I was very impressed with the line of Sheppard, Cogliano, and Bertram. Seemed to have the best chemisty of all the lines. Carey Price was the best goalie, although I really only got a good look at him and Plante. Bourdon and Letang were the best pairing on defence they didn't seem to miss a beat with each other even though they haven't played together since last Christmas. On a whole I was very impressed with Ryan O'Marra, defensively and offensively, he was all over the place. As was Ryan Parent who was by far the best defencemen in my opinion and Brassard's skating impressed me as he was one of the fastest skaters out there.
The not so good was that it was obvious with a lot of them that they hadn't skated much with it being summer and all. I don't know much about Bryan Little having never seen him live before, but he stood out most in this regard. It seemed that he was struggling to keep up with Ryder and Hamill. Claude Giroux wasn't very good either, he wasn't seeing the ice so well or something cause he not only ran into other players on at least three occasions, but at least twice tried to pass the puck and missed the intended player completely. Tyler Plante wasn't so good, although he got a little stronger as the practice went on. Overall, no one really stood out as being terrible, but I was suprised that I didn't notice either Staal, good or bad. The same thing goes for Latendresse, who impressed me at last year's camp, but it was only the second day. I plan on going to all three intersquad games, so hopefully by then the players will be in a better groove or whatever and it will be easier to get a read on them.