By Steve Buono
This summer the Hartford Wolf Pack winger and serious Rangers roster contender, put in a hard workout-times-100 at the club’s annual Prospects Camp, early this month. He’s done that three years running as well.
But he’s added a new push to his drive to prepare for the fall. Deciding to set his sights on making the top team in September, by shooting higher this summer still. Jessiman is continuing to hone his competitive edge in the Top Gun Hockey League at Hingham Rink in Massachusetts.
“Guys like myself (play in it),” Jessiman said. “Young pros. There are a couple of older pros that are there too. So it’s good.”
Keeping him spry until training camp, an important one for Jessiman, as he faces-off in his second year of pro hockey later this summer?
“Absolutely,” Jessiman fired back. “Since they (Rangers) know I am doing well (with conditioning), they leave me to do that (the Top Gun League) this summer. So it works out well.”
Jessiman, who annually hits the beaches of Nantucket for his New England summer splash, has been living in Boston since late spring.
“It’s been great, I love it,” he said.
Rangers Prospects Camp came up right on time this summer, getting him solidly on track following his rookie season, when he followed a common wavy adjustment curve moving up to the pro game. Jessiman began the 2005-06 season with Hartford, then did a spell with the Rangers’ ECHL club in Charlotte to finish out the year, before being brought back up to the pack in January. Where he stayed the rest of the season.
“I just use it (the camp) as the chance to take in a lot of stuff this summer,” Jessiman said. “I just enjoyed all the resources they had for us there, and the ability to get feedback from the coaches. And obviously from the staff there. It was just great.”
Finalist for NHL Coach of the Year, the Rangers’ Tom Renney was one. He told 6-6, 225-pound Jessiman that his most productive road would be to follow the example of new Ranger, old pro, 38-year old star legend Brendan Shanahan. They want him to become a strong two-way presence; they want him to go to the net.
“It was really a good thing to do in the summer,” Jessiman added. “It gives me 10 weeks to go back and figure out what those messages were, so I can apply them.”
The messages came not only from the coaching staff, but from all aspects of the experience he has had. An experience of a young man battling, with many others just like him, the odds of taking his game to the highest level: to Broadway. Those messages are not all spoken, or so easily relayed as with hearing a few words from a coach. They come from individual challenge, individual experience.
And there’s more. The mundane means a lot too when you look to reach your peak in pro sports.
“Even little things like, eating, and nutrition habits,” Jessiman said. “I mean, anything.”
As for Renney’s comments, made prior to the Rangers going out and signing Shanahan off of the Detroit roster, Shanahan’s spirit preceded the man himself.
“It’s pretty cool, that is why I was pretty pumped-up when they signed him,” Jessiman, brightening, said. “It was really interesting, because I thought it was pretty cool the way they signed him about a week later.
“It’s a good message to me. Because that’s the guy they want there, and maybe I can sort of emulate what he is doing.”
Rangers Special Assistant for Prospects Development, and Stanley Cup-winning yeoman in 1994, Adam Graves, was at camp as always, to lend lots; passing on his winning ways.
“He (Graves) is easy to reach, made himself available, he’s a great guy,” Jessiman said. “He spoke to us a lot about, our — how we think the game. And how that is going to play out for us. How we approach this season, and take advantage of the camp.”
Jessiman is determined to make that next step. With more than a little elbow room on the Rangers shifting roster, following last year’s regular season triumphs, but devilish post-season death-trap.
“I think I’ve learned a lot this year,” Jessiman said. “And I have a lot more to take into this (season), obviously, from what I’ve learned last year. I just want to have a good year this year. Really focus on just having a good start.”
A lot of that will have to do with, scoring, yes — he’s got the hands, that’s half the reason he was drafted in the first place. But it will have just as much to do this September, more than ever, with how much bother he gives opponents looking to put numbers up on the board as well.
He finished up his first pro season a plus-4, and racked up 66 penalty minutes in aggressive play, including a number of scraps with experienced knucklers.
In his brief stint with the Rangers ECHL affiliate in Charlotte, Jessiman scored 13 goals, had 10 assists, 23 points, and 56 penalty minutes.
Nine of his goals were on the powerplay, one shorthanded. He responded right away, scoring a hat trick in his first game after being shipped to the Checkers in November for fine tuning. He checked out of Charlotte at the start of the year, after 25 games.
Like Wolf Pack GM and coach Jim Schoenfeld said at the start of last season: “You take his skill, his offensive instincts, and then you add the physicality to his game, and it makes him a tough guy to play against.”
As Jessiman was over the course of his rookie pro season.
“When I was at Dartmouth (2002-05, freshman through junior seasons) I used my hands,” Jessiman said. “You can, get by not having to be — or play the big role (scoring), just because you have a big body. And now, they are stressing
to me, that is what I have to do.
“In order to be that power forward, you have to use your body. Protect the puck, and do all that.”
Jessiman gave up his senior year at Dartmouth to go pro last summer. And he’s glad he did.
“There are some guys, like Zach Parise (of the Devils, picked 17th in the 2003 draft) for example, who plays that role (as goal scorer) and continues to play that role,” Jessiman said. “But even he had to change up his game a little bit (as a pro), in order to play in the NHL. And I think if (I) scored 50 goals, whatever, at Dartmouth, I would still have so much learning to do. The adjustment period, I think, will be easier this year because of the fact that I played pro last year. Its been really valuable.”
