The chirps start each morning when Adam Fantilli arrives at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Mich.<\/p>\n
They come from one of Fantilli\u2019s teammates and best friends in Zach Werenski.<\/p>\n
If it were a buddy cop movie, Werenski would be the grizzled but decorated veteran, Fantilli the talented, hotshot youngster.<\/p>\n
As such, It’s only natural for Werenski \u2013 the Norris Trophy runner-up a season ago, a U.S. national team veteran and alternate captain for the Blue Jackets \u2013 to give his younger counterpart the business during their offseason training sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s fun for me to be hard on him, just being an older guy,\u201d Werenski said. \u201cI always give him a lot of crap, and I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll say that. But it\u2019s more in good fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fair to say that Fantilli \u2013 someone who also could be in line to be win major NHL trophies, become a national team stalwart and wear a letter on his chest at some point in Columbus \u2013 doesn\u2019t mind it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all in good fun,\u201d Fantilli said. \u201cHe does it just to keep me in line as a young guy and to make jokes, make conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being here with him. It\u2019s great to have a teammate here, especially him. The guy is the best player on our team. You want to try to be with him and to work out and train with him. It\u2019s really helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
And to hear Werenski tell it, it\u2019s not like Fantilli needs the extra push going into his third NHL campaign. The league’s youngest 30-goal scorer a season ago didn\u2019t get where he is by taking days off, and Fantilli has already earned the respect of the nine-year NHL veteran at the top of his game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019m not even really showing him the way,\u201d Werenski said. \u201cHe has a lot of guys to look up to, and he already knows the way. He\u2019s a great worker, and he knows what he needs to work on in the summers and he does it. He comes in every day and grinds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love having him here. \u2026 He\u2019s a hell of a hockey player, and he\u2019s always pushing me to get better and hopefully I can do the same for him. I think it\u2019s great for me. It\u2019s something I wish I had when I was his age. It\u2019s just going to benefit him more and more every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though he hails from the Greater Toronto Area, Fantilli chooses to get much of his pre-training camp work done in Plymouth, a short 15-minute drive from where he burst onto the scene at the University of Michigan, winning the Hobey Baker Award as the best player in college hockey as a freshman before becoming the third overall pick in the NHL draft.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old center has settled on spending a lot of summer in the Detroit suburbs for a few reasons. Being close to his college town and having U-M buddies to hang out with \u2013 including his brother, Luca, a Michigan defenseman \u2013 helps, as does the high-level competition he can sharpen himself against during daily workouts and summer skates.<\/p>\n
The Hughes brothers \u2013 Jack, Quinn and Luke, all young NHL standouts in their own right \u2013 are often present, and when BlueJackets.com visited earlier this month for a summer check-in, a bevy of NHLers were in and out of the facility. Fantilli first got the invitation to join during COVID times, when he was still a year or two away from his Michigan exploits or becoming an NHL star but still was making a name for himself in the hockey world.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got on the ice and I was so nervous to be around the guys and everything,\u201d Fantilli said. \u201cI was so happy to get on the ice with them for that duration of time. And then slowly as the years go on, I feel like I fit in more and more and actually push the group. \u2026 They\u2019re my buddies now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scenes in the gym and on the ice aren\u2019t necessarily dramatic \u2013 there\u2019s no ear-splitting music in the gym, no screaming strength coaches getting in the faces of the players \u2013 but the intensity is real when you\u2019re working with the best of the best.<\/p>\n
The on-ice session was split into drills and mini-games, and the competitiveness among the high-level athletes is palpable. While there are light moments like stick taps for a player who loses an edge and slips to the ice, each 3-on-3 game ends with joyous winners celebrating and losers who start moving nets and pucks into place for the next battle.<\/p>\n
Through it all, Fantilli \u2013 who has often talked about learning and getting better every day of his NHL career \u2013 is a keen observer of what\u2019s going on around him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all All-Stars out there,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going against guys that are the best in the league in a lot of senses. I can take from a lot of guys\u2019 games. You have Jack and Quinn out there that are two of the most shifty guys in the NHL, and that\u2019s something I want to add to my game as well. Cole (Caufield) is such a great shooter. Usually Kyle Connor and (Dylan) Larkin are out there, and those are both world-class forwards as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re guys I want to take from their games. Learning from them every day has been really beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then, of course, there\u2019s the presence of Werenski, a fellow Michigan Man who speaks often about how much Fantilli\u2019s work with such decorated pros will help him in his development. This is the second straight year the two have worked together for a significant part of the offseason, and Fantilli sees the benefits of keeping one of his CBJ leaders in close proximity during the summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a great role model,\u201d Fantilli said. \u201cNot only that, I\u2019ve become close with him. He\u2019s a really good friend now. It\u2019s great to be around him. He works so hard. He grinds. It\u2019s a great example for me as a young guy. As a leader in Columbus, he\u2019s a guy that I look up to a lot throughout the season, and being able to have him here in the offseason is just as helpful. It\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Fantilli, Werenski sees a player who not only can help take the Blue Jackets to the next level but also someone who has become an indispensable part of its core in just two seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a guy that\u2019s a leader on this team and is going to be a leader in Columbus for a long time,\u201d Werenski said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to have a young guy like that that understands what it takes to be great in this league.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it all starts on warm summer days in suburban Detroit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chirps start each morning when Adam Fantilli arrives at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Mich. They come…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":157324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-157323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115053177451305655","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}