Not one to gather moss, Cochrane’s Wacey Hamilton is rolling up the road from Binghamton to Utica.
The 24-year-old forward was at the Ottawa Senators training camp in September, and when the National Hockey League club failed to reassign Hamilton to its American Hockey League affiliate in the upstate New York city, he caught on with the Utica Comets 145 kilometres north on Highway 12.
Having your gear bag ready to travel is just part of the life of a minor-league pro on the move.
“Things have been going really well,” Hamilton says of his early days with the Vancouver Canucks AHL affiliate in Utica. The 5-foot-11, 175-pound forward has two assists in five games with Utica.
“I’ve been playing with some great players and have been lucky enough to find some good chemistry with them.”
Hamilton isn’t the only player on the move, as pro hockey’s early season brings player movement as National Hockey League clubs start reassigning players.
“There have been a lot of guys coming in and going out the past few days which can start to get a little distracting if you start thinking about it too much,” Hamilton admits. “So I’ve just tried to sort of put my head down and keep working as hard as I can every day.”
Hard work is what endeared Hamilton to head coach Willie Desjardins when they were together with the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers for four seasons from 2007-11. Desjardins is now head coach of the Comets’ National Hockey League parent club in Vancouver. While he may have an ally in a pivotal role with the franchise, Hamilton harbours no illusions about the tenuous nature of his situation.
“I signed a 25-day PTO (professional tryout offer) so that’s eased my mind a bit,” he relates. “In saying that, I know that they can release me from my PTO at any time, so the pressure is still on me every day to perform. And I like that.”
