A couple weeks ago, T.J. Friedmann, who grew up in South County and now plays NCAA hockey at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, got an unexpected phone call. It was from Keith Tkachuk.
Tkachuk, who played nine seasons with the Blues and has the third-most goals of any American-born player, has the title of director of player recruitment for the team and one of his jobs is to find undrafted college players, such as Friedmann.
Tkachuk was calling with an invitation to take part in the Blues’ developmental camp. The response from Friedmann was not long in coming.
“About 10 seconds,” he said. “It was a quick yes, for sure. I saw it as a great experience and couldn’t turn it down.”
Along with all the draft picks, some of whom will be playing soon at events such as the world juniors, and recent college graduates that were in town for the Blues’ development camp last week, there was another constituency on the ice. Six players taking part this week at Centene Community Ice Center were products of St. Louis’ growing hockey community. For them, wearing a Blues jersey, if only a practice jersey in July, was a big deal.
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“It’s special,” Friedmann said. “Growing up, you go to all the games, you watch them, they’re kind of like the idols of the area, they’re legends to you. So being a part of a little part of the organization here at camp, it’s been a good time, getting able to get in, kind of learn some things here and there between the off-ice video they’re doing with us and then the on-ice application. It’s been a good experience for us.”
Along with Friedmann, who like the others played a couple of seasons of high school hockey — in his case at CBC — before beginning the itinerant life of a young hockey player in North America and playing juniors elsewhere, were five other locals: goalie Jake Barczewski, from O’Fallon, Missouri, who is now playing at Canisius; defenseman Christian Berger, who played with St. Louis University High and is now at Penn State; goalie Jack Caruso, who also played at CBC and was a backup keeper on last season’s NCAA champions at Denver; Garrett Dahm, a forward from Swansea, who played for the…
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