Former Skyhawk heading to Red Wings Camp

Yves Bastien seen here coaching at Eurocamp. The Dowling, Ontario native played for the Skyhawks as a 15-year old three years ago and now he's heading to his first NHL training camp. Photo by Chris Dawson.

It was a bad news-good news situation for former North Bay Skyhawks forward Yves Bastien.

The bad news was that the speedy forward was overlooked this summer in the annual NHL Entry Draft where Central Scouting had him ranked 205th out of North American skaters eligible to be drafted.

The good news came after the draft when Joe McDonnell, the Detroit Red Wings Director of Amateur Scouting, called and asked if he would be interested in attending their training camp.

“They called me right after the draft and they said that they’d like for me to come to their camp and I’m just going to take it as an opportunity to show them what I got and maybe have a chance in a couple years to play on their roster,” said Bastien who is working out and coaching at North Bay’s Eurocamp Hockey School this month.

“It’s going to be a learning curve for myself. I’ll go to rookie camp and see if I can make it to main camp and then we’ll see what happens when I get there.”

The Dowling, Ontario product played his second year in the OHL last season scoring 14 goals and 34 points in 66 games split between Kitchener and Peterborough last season.

Bastien also has another obstacle to overcome which is his eyesight as he was born with limited vision in his right eye. There was even some talk among NHL scouts going into the NHL draft that his sight wasn’t good enough to pass the NHL vision standards. But Bastien claims that situation is unclear due to the fact that his vision problem is something he has dealt with his entire life and not as a result of injury.

“A lot of people are saying my vision did have something to do with it but personally I don’t think I had a very good season I think I could have had a better season and that would have probably helped me to get into the draft rankings but I thought I finished off well and showed some people what I can do over in Finland so hopefully I can take that into next year and show them what I got,” said Bastien.

Despite being only five-foot-nine and partially blind in one eye, Bastien made the most out of his given talents, especially at the World Under-18 hockey championships in Finland. Bastien scored three goals and added an assist totaling 4 points in the six-game tournament in which Canada finished 4th. At that event he proved that he can play alongside the best players in his age category.

The Red Wings rookie camp takes place in September in Traverse City, Michigan.