Wilderness Wrap Up Main Tryout Camp

The camp ended with Wednesday night's all star game.

CLOQUET, Minn. -The Minnesota Wilderness are in the middle of their main tryout camp, hosting over 140 players from all over the world. After Wednesday morning’s round of scrimmages, the staff will cut the roster to 40. Those players played in Wednesday night’s all star game, giving the skaters one last chance to make an impression.

This week of tryout camp has allowed the coaching staff to see what kind of talent they have and what kind of team they want to build.

“We want guys that can come play, we play a lot of games. It’s a big time schedule upgrade from high school hockey or legion hockey. High school hockey you play 20, 25 games, and junior hockey we play a minimum of 60 so it’s a lot more of a grind. So the kids have to be consistent, they need to develop their work habits and be able to practice every day and work hard. It’s an eight month season so it’s really long,” Wilderness head coach Dave Boitz said.

While the Wilderness have players from all over coming to try out, they have a few local guys trying to make the team as well. The Wilderness have had a handful of players from the Northland on the team in the past few years, and coach Boitz feels that trend will continue this year.

“We’ll have local kids on the team again. It’s one of those things where there’s just a lot of good hockey players that live in this neck of the woods so it’s sort of nice to have a backyard and can always find a handful of players that can help your team and that will be that way again this year as well,” Boitz added.

The coaching staff would make final cuts after the all star game and create their roster of 28 to 30 people that will report to camp in the fall.