UW men's hockey: Turris determined to finish freshman season on an upswing

Todd D. Milewski  —  3/13/2008 6:28 am

Kyle Turris isn't one to sugarcoat things in terms of self-evaluation.

Ask how his freshman season at the University of Wisconsin has gone, and he'll detail an up-and-down journey on which he has struggled at times with the learning curve of a higher level of hockey.

In an in-depth conversation about what has caused those struggles and how he has tried to work out of them, he paints the picture of an 18-year-old player desperate to find himself on the ice before the season runs out of games.

There will be plenty more games in Turris' career; almost certainly, many will come in the National Hockey League. For Wisconsin this season, however, the number is dwindling.

Turris and the Badgers open the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs with a best-of-three series at St. Cloud State starting Friday, and the center is going all-out in an effort to be at his best during the postseason.

That's nothing new. Some of what he has fought this season has come from inside his own head, however, and that's something he's looking to correct.

"I get so frustrated at times, just little bounces that I don't get or some stupid play that I make," Turris said. "I'm a guy that tries to be loose and have fun before the game, try not to think about it too much, just because I don't like over-thinking the game.

"But when I'm on a downswing, before the game I'm trying to get focused and visualize certain things happening so that it gets me back on the upswing. But then it takes away from me joking around before and being loose. It's finding the balance."

In describing his season with the Badgers, Turris, the team's leading scorer, divided it into four sections. He called two of them downswings.

Maybe it's everything catching up to him. A packed schedule. High personal expectations. Playing as a marked man, both in being the Badgers' top playmaker and as the No. 3 overall draft choice last year.

"He's dealing with being the target, and it's interrupted the flow of his game at times," said Tom Kurvers, a former Hobey Baker Award-winning defenseman at Minnesota-Duluth who now is the Phoenix Coyotes' director of player personnel.

"He's been challenged quite a bit in college hockey, and that's part of maturing. That's part of learning how to handle those things that come at you. When he moves up a level, whenever that may be, there'll be more of that."

Moving up?

When will that be? Almost like a superstition, everyone involved is careful to avoid talking about it while the Badgers are still playing this season.

The Coyotes, who selected Turris last June with an idea that he'd spend time in college to mature physically, say they're in no hurry to move him up.

"It really has to be a decision that he makes, his family makes, his advisor makes, we make together, saying, 'What's the best course for Kyle Turris?'" Coyotes general manager Don Maloney said. "Is it accelerating his development and turning pro as early as the end of this year? Or is it another good summer, another year at Wisconsin, another bigger, stronger year?"

One line of speculation is that Turris will join the Coyotes as soon as the UW season is over. Phoenix is in a race for the final Western Conference playoff spot and might be in need of a boost in the final days of its schedule.

The Coyotes, who are five points behind Vancouver for the eighth spot with 12 games to play, have six regular-season games remaining after the WCHA playoffs and three after the NCAA regionals.

Maloney wouldn't rule out the possibility that Turris could be in Phoenix before the end of the NHL regular season.

"We really try to leave it alone," he said. "The worst thing we could do as an organization is have him in his own mind one step out of the door. We want him to finish strong. We want him to win, we want him to win at Wisconsin. And once that's over with, then we can say 'OK, where do we go from here?'"

Turris might have to make a quick decision on his future, but he said that won't necessarily make him more likely to think about it in advance.

Badgers coach Mike Eaves, who has seen first-round pick Ryan Suter leave for the NHL after one season and first-rounder Jack Skille go pro after two seasons, has offered Turris an outlet to talk about the situation, but he expects that to come after the UW season.

"It's that storm moving off the side of the mountain -- we know it's coming and we're going to have to get an umbrella out and take cover," Eaves said. "I'm not trying to spend a lot of time on that."

The Coyotes have some other young talent on the horizon. They own the rights to a number of prominent college players, including Michigan senior center Kevin Porter, the favorite to win the Hobey Baker, and Minnesota junior center Blake Wheeler.

They also have tapped good rookie seasons from 19-year-old winger Peter Mueller and 21-year-old center Martin Hanzal, their first-round picks in 2005 and 2006, respectively.

Maloney said one reason the team would consider bringing Turris along soon is that Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky is crafting a strong track record for developing young talent.

"He is terrific with young players. He plays young players. He puts young players in roles to have success," Maloney said. "If it was a more typical organization where your coach is looking to win today at all costs and, 'Give me the 29-year-old, not the 18-year-old,' then there might be a little more hesitation."

Building strength

The one thing standing between Turris and being able to play in the NHL right now, Coyotes personnel say, is strength.

But with Turris' young age, that doesn't appear to be too prominent a concern for the long run.

His UW biography lists him at 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds. NHL Central Scouting had him at 170 pounds on a 6-foot-0 frame last year.

As early as the first WCHA series of this season, opponents were trying to neutralize Turris' talent with the puck by using a physical defensive approach. Turris said he didn't initially know how to handle it. At other levels, his team was able to send a fighter out to create room for him; fighting is punished by a suspension in college.

Physical growth will come, Maloney said.

"Nature will take its course in the next year, two, three -- whatever that timeframe is," he said. "He's a growing boy, and a young boy. As he thickens up and gets stronger in all areas, his game is going to expand. And he's a very good player right now."

Coyotes director of amateur scouting Keith Gretzky -- Wayne's younger brother -- said he came away from watching Turris play at Minnesota three weeks ago thinking that the organization's top prospect has no issues with passing and instincts, only strength.

"He's got to commit this summer to getting stronger and working hard to get a lot stronger, his body more physically ready to play against older players," Keith Gretzky said.

Example to follow?

Top-tier players having questions about whether they're strong enough to make the jump to the NHL isn't unfamiliar at Wisconsin.

Dany Heatley was listed at 6-3, 200 pounds when he arrived at UW as an 18-year-old in 1999. He was the second overall pick by the Atlanta Thrashers the next summer after an outstanding rookie season with the Badgers.

But after deciding to return to Wisconsin for his sophomore season, Heatley said he didn't think he was ready for the NHL. By the time he started playing for Atlanta in 2001, he had added 15 pounds to his frame and it translated into a rookie-of-the-year season.

The NHL game has changed in the interval between Heatley and Turris, however, now emphasizing speed and skill over raw power.

This season, smaller forwards Patrick Kane and Sam Gagner -- who was set to come to Wisconsin but opted to turn pro instead -- are enjoying solid NHL rookie seasons despite not possessing incredible strength.

Turris, who last week was named the No. 2 NHL prospect by The Hockey News, has shown the Coyotes that he possesses the natural gifts to be an NHL player. They've seen it when he gets some space in which to work with the puck.

"When he has room to make plays and to go to the right place, it's very natural," Kurvers said. "He flows to the open ice real well, he moves the puck extremely well -- accurate, firm passes. He has the quick release and he knows how to get the puck high from in close, which is the mark of a real goal scorer. There are some things that are just basically part of him that are hard to find. It doesn't come along very often."

The trick is for Turris to create room for himself. He said it correlates with his energy level, which he admits hasn't been high recently.

He started the UW season with five goals and 12 points in four nonconference games, then had only two goals and seven points over the next 12 games before he left to play for Canada in the World Junior Championship.

After returning from a gold-medal performance, he had nine points in seven games for the Badgers. He has just three points in his last nine games -- the second downswing, as he called it.

"If I have lots of energy, I don't find any trouble getting open," said Turris, who also has battled illness at times through the season. "But I haven't had very good energy."

Turris' season started before everyone else because he played for Canada in an eight-game series against Russia in August and September. Add that to the draft hoopla last summer and the World Juniors after Christmas, and it has been a long road without many breaks.

He said Wisconsin's bye weekend to close the regular season helped him get some energy back before the playoffs start.

"I feel like I'm going to come into this weekend, have a really good weekend and contribute and be on top of my game," Turris said.

He goes to extremes to hone that game, sometimes taking advantage of living in the dorms across the street from the Kohl Center to use the rink for a late-night, one-man practice session.

Turris said he's trying to make every possible shot in a game feel natural through repetition.

"I've been working on lots," he said.

"He's a perfectionist," Keith Gretzky said. "He wants to be the best that he can be, and he's not going to let anything interfere with that."

Todd D. Milewski  —  3/13/2008 6:28 am