The 17-year-old goalie still has the jerseys of his favorite Canucks growing up: Daniel Sedin and Roberto Luongo. So, it was a little surreal for him to be on the ice with Daniel Sedin, his twin brother Henrik and Ian Clark, the goaltending coach who worked with Luongo for four seasons from 2006-10, at Canucks development camp last month.
"It doesn't feel real," Young said. "I feel like I'm living in a dream. It's a crazy feeling to be able to just look across the ice and there they are, or when they sat and had dinner with us. It's not like they're like so far away anymore on the TV screen. You're actually talking to them."
The Sedin brothers provided the star power -- and the obvious temptation to ask for an autograph -- but it was Clark who gave the biggest ego boost to the 6-foot-3 goalie, who did not attend the draft in Montreal because he was worried that he wouldn't be selected despite rising from No. 21 on NHL Central Scouting's midseason ranking of North American goalies to No. 6 when the final rankings were released.
Clark said the Canucks ranked Young atop their list of available goalies, with the one caveat being that they look more for raw skill and other physical, competitive and coachable attributes. Translation: There's still work to do on his game.
"He's one of the rare Canadian wild horses," Clark said. "I've used that term before referring to Eastern European goalies that have underlying talent, but aren't yet over-programed structurally, and I think he falls into that category.
"He has a lot of those underlying elements we believe are the crown jewels of [that] position and now that he's in our stable we have an opportunity to really get to work on some of those other more tangible elements."
