What a difference a year makes.
That was Sam Honzek’s first thought when he found out he’d be sticking around with the Calgary Flames to start the season on Monday morning.
A year ago, the 19-year-old winger was injured leaving training camp and feeling pretty down as he headed back for another year in the WHL with the Vancouver Giants.
Now, he’s skating on a line with Nazem Kadri and Andrei Kuzmenko after Yegor Sharangovich got hurt and will be headed to Vancouver again, this time to skate in his first NHL game with the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night.
Twelve months can make a big difference in a young player’s career, and Honzek is proof.
He knew he didn’t impress in training camp last year. He knew he didn’t have a great season with the Giants. He knew people were already questioning whether he was worth the pick the Flames used to select him in the first-round of the 2023 NHL Draft.
And he used it all as motivation during an intense summer of workouts with Flames teammate Martin Pospisil that led into an exceptional training camp and saw him lead his team in pre-season points, with seven.
“My first thing was where I saw myself last year or where I was, and you compare yourself to a year after or now,” Honzek said Monday morning. “I would say I wasn’t happy. I would agree with those (critics). It wasn’t the right me or the true me or why I was drafted in the first round.
“It was tough to hear or see but I knew it was true and I could tell the same thing … That kind of pushed me through and I stayed focused, and I wanted to prove I was worth a first-round pick and I’m a good player.”
A player who internalizes criticism and uses it as fuel to improve? Who doesn’t like that?
Honzek has been the best story to come out of Flames camp this year, and has emerged not only as a guy who made the team, but as a player the coaching staff wants to see next to Kadri and Kuzmenko.
Sharangovich was listed as week-to-week on Monday morning and nobody should expecting Honzek to simply step-in as a teenager and fill the shoes of his team’s top goal-scorer last year.
But he’s got a golden opportunity to make a mark. Kadri brought out the best in Pospisil and Connor Zary when they broke into the NHL last season as rookies, and Kuzmenko is a wicked finisher around the net.
“When you look at trying to put your lines together, Kads and Kuzy have great chemistry together, we know that,” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska. “The other part of that line last year was when (Pospisil) was on that line. Marty had straight line speed, very similar to what Honzek has, so they have sort of the same characteristics. It kind of made sense to try him there.
“Just the way those two players are similar, in a way, with the size and the speed that they play with, we thought it might work well with Kads and Kuzy.”
If Honzek has exceeded expectations so far this fall, well, he’s got the chance to blow past them in the coming weeks.
He’ll have a group of his former Giants teammates at Wednesday’s game, and as of Monday morning was trying to figure out if there was a way to get his family in from Slovakia — it’s an 18-hour journey, according to Google Flights.
Playing in his first NHL game is a dream come true for every young player and a year ago, it felt a long way off for Honzek.
But he put in the work and did what was asked and then made himself indispensable throughout the pre-season.
And having Pospisil in his corner didn’t hurt, either.
“Pospy helped me, he said ‘You’re making the NHL, you’re making the NHL this year, don’t even think about that you’ll be in the AHL’,” Honzek said. “We were joking that there’s a Four Nations Tournament so there will be a break in February for two weeks and he’s like ‘We’re going to Mexico, are you coming with us?’ and I go ‘I don’t know’ and he goes ‘No man, you’re coming. You’re going to be with the Big Boys.’ ”
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