Hunter Brzustewicz talks hot start to OHL season, learning from the Canucks’ legendary staff, and more: Canucks Conversation

On Monday’s episode of Canucks Conversation, Chris Faber and David Quadrelli broke down all things Vancouver Canucks. At the forefront was the Canucks’ 4-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers, as the guys got their first chance to react to the Canucks moving to 2-0 on the season.

Later, they were joined by Canucks prospect defenceman Hunter Brzustewicz for a 13-minute interview. The Canucks drafted Brzustewicz in the third round of the 2023 NHL Entry Draft at 75th overall. An offensively-gifted right shot defenceman, Brzustewicz put up 57 points through 68 games in his draft year.

With a 5-2 record so far, Brzustewicz’s Kitchener Rangers squad is off to a hot start this season, and Brzustewicz has been a major part of that. In his draft year, Brzustewicz finished the year with just six goals. Through seven games this season, he’s already up to four and has added nine assists for a whopping 13 points through seven games played.

“It’s been very fun,” Brzustewicz said of he and his team’s early success. “I think from last year to this year, the team off the ice is just gelling really well. Everyone wants to play for each other no matter what the score is or no matter what’s happening. We always want to keep going and bury teams.”

Brzustewicz also talked about his time at Canucks development camp, his first NHL training camp, and learning from Sergei Gonchar along with the rest of the Canucks’ coaching and development staff.

“It’s really cool. At the start of the camp, someone was like ‘this is the best staff or the most experienced staff that anyone has been apart of.’ I didn’t really think about it at the start, but once I really thought about it, it was pretty cool to realize it probably is at the NHL, and it’s pretty cool to learn from them and pick up little things.”

Brzustewicz added that between dev camp, Young Stars, and training camp, he became good friends with Vilmer Alriksson, and is looking forward to when their teams will meet this season in the OHL. Speaking of the OHL, Brzustewicz spoke about why he chose to go to Canada for his junior career instead of staying home in America.

“It was really cool to go through the process. Obviously I was going to Michigan, and it’s my favourite school, favourite team in the world with football and basketball, so it was really hard for me to leave. Obviously I wanted to play a lot more hockey, wanted to play more minutes, and I needed to do what I needed to do to get to the next level, and that was coming to Kitchener.”

Watch the full interview below!

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