After playing 13 games for the Ottawa Senators last season, Angus Crookshank had every right to head into the summer feeling like he had a reasonable chance to win a full-time NHL job this season.
A lot has happened since then. A lot.
For one, the Sens hired a whole new coaching staff last May, and no two coaching staffs ever see things exactly the same way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the Sens had a new beholder.
A few weeks later, in early June, Crookshank signed a one-year deal as an RFA, not knowing the club was about to sign David Perron, Noah Gregor, Nick Cousins, Michael Amadio, and Adam Gaudette. That effectively knocked him down five spots on the organizational depth chart.
Crookshank was then released very early from Sens training camp in September, before AHL teammates like Zack Ostapchuk, Cole Reinhardt, Matthew Highmore, and Jan Jenik, who had all played fewer NHL games than he did last season. And all of them have gotten call-ups ahead of him this year.
So, for Crookshank, it probably felt like his paved bridge back to the NHL had just collapsed.
But none of this has affected his attitude or pit-bull-level work ethic. He leads Belleville with 16 goals, stands fourth with 27 points, and still has B-Sens head coach David Bell firmly in his corner.
When host Steve Lloyd specifically asked Bell about Crookshank at the end of a TSN 1200 radio interview on Tuesday, Bell couldn’t say enough good things about the player.
“He’s grown his game,” Bell said. “Before, it was probably a deficiency defensively. He kills penalties for us now. He plays center for us sometimes. Now he’s playing right wing with Reinhardt down here. So he plays all three positions. He’s on at the end of the game. He’s consciously rounded out his game to be more reliable defensively and more reliable on the walls.”
As for Crookshank’s drive, Bell says he’s never coached anyone like him.
“You know what? It’s just one of those things where it stinks. You’ve just got to wait your turn. If he continues to put up numbers down here—and again, he led our team two years in a row in scoring, and he’s probably going to do it again—at some point, he’s going to get his crack. And he’s probably the hungriest player I’ve coached, ever, to have the drive to get to the National Hockey League. So when you’ve got that drive, he’ll get there. He’ll get there at some point.”
Crookshank had two separate NHL stints last season, and they couldn’t have been more different. The first was seven…