Photo Credit: Anne-Marie Sorvin/USA TODAY Sports

Drafted with the Vancouver Canucks’ first-round pick at the 2012 NHL Entry Draft, Brendan Gaunce was initially touted as a big, two-way centreman – the sort of player that’s always at a premium in the NHL.

To open the 2015 Young Stars tournament on Friday, however, Gaunce will be flanking centreman Jared McCann on the left wing. It’s where he spent the entirety of his first professional season with the Utica Comets too.

The Canucks aren’t the first organization to move Gaunce out of the middle of the ice.

In his draft plus-one year Gaunce’s major junior team, the Belleville Bulls, traded for Tyler Graovac – a high-scoring centreman. They paired Gaunce with Graovac, and the two found instant chemistry, helping to power the Bulls to the Eastern Conference Final (where they fell in seven games to Aaron Ekblad’s Barrie Colts). 

Gaunce moved back to centre for his final major junior campaign, but the Canucks barely hesitated when he turned pro last fall. 

“We talked about that last year at this time: we wanted him to play wing,” Canucks director of player development Stan Smyl said on Friday. “(There’s) a couple of things: I think the biggest thing is that if you take a look down the middle we’re pretty solid down that way. So we’re going to need a player that’s skilled who can.. handle the boards and he went through that transition and did really well.”

Comets head coach Travis Green concurred with Smyl’s assessment – that Gaunce is better suited to the wing.

“We thought last year that he was better off for the wing… I still have the same beliefs,” Green said following Friday’s game day skate. “I thought it was a good decision to put him on the wing last year, I liked the way his game developed.”

The 21-year-old forward didn’t post gaudy counting stats in his first year with the Comets, notching just 11 goals and 29 total points before adding nine points in 21 playoff games. He mostly acquitted himself though, and earned additional trust from the coaching staff as the season went on. 

“He was our most improved player,” Green said of Gaunce, according to Jason Botchford of the Vancouver Province. “He had some real good moments in the playoffs.”

The organization, in particular, was enthused about the ‘edge’ or a certain element of ‘meanness’ that his game took on when he was playing along the wall, rather than in the middle of the ice.

“Sometimes as you go through juniors you kind of get into a role – ok I have to play that way, I’m the best player, I’ll play power play, penalty kill – and you’ve got to make things happen for yourself,” Smyl explained, when asked what impressed him most about Gaunce’s development last season. “You’ve got to play outside your box a little bit, and play with a bit more edge. So I think the biggest part for me is that he played with a bit more edge, and got involved in the games a little bit more.”

Green echoed that sentiment on Friday.

And as for Gaunce? The young forward isn’t quite so sure that his game changes all that much when he plays on the wing.

“There’s not really much difference once you start playing, because the only time you’re really a winger full time is on the draw,” Gaunce said. “I think there’s still… It’s not fully closed for me to play centre again, but I’m starting on the wing again and that’s where I’m going to play at this tournament. I play the game the same way whether I’m at wing or at centre.”

He does accept though that his game developed nicely when he was placed on the wing.

“I think my game progressed last year especially as a winger,” Gaunce told me on Friday. “And I hope it just keeps progressing at this tournament.”