Young Flyers enjoy bonding at 'Trial on the Isle'

STONE HARBOR, N.J. - When the 33 Flyers prospects at the team's development camp linked arms and walked into the Atlantic Ocean around 9 a.m. yesterday, they were exercising the advice of a friend of Flyers head athletic trainer Jim McCrossin.

A former Navy SEAL, McCrossin's friend knows plenty about teamwork and bonding.

"You're going out to face your fears, but you're going out together," McCrossin said. "And we're all going out together, and we're all coming back together. Same thing when they're going on the ice."

That's one of the many lessons taught throughout the day at the annual Flyers development camp "Trial on the Isle," a team-building and fan-friendly day at the shore run by McCrossin and his wife, Robyn.

"The goal of the event is to have some work, a lot of fun, a lot of team bonding and build some camaraderie that these guys need going forward," McCrossin said.

Yesterday's installment of the event was the 15th. McCrossin, who's been with the organization since 1998, started it in 2000 to help break up the monotony of offseason workouts. It's gone on every year except the summer heading into the locked-out 2004-05 season.

Things kicked off with such beach activities as tossing horseshoes, building and flying kites and sculpting Flyers logos in the sand.

From there, the competition moved to the Yacht Club of Stone Harbor, where 11 teams of three were each given four tubes, duct tape and paddles and had to best figure out how to maneuver through the water. The fastest group and overall competition winner was the team of Robert Hagg, Tyrell Goulbourne and Cole Bardreau.

All of these competitions, quirky in nature, were McCrossin's ideas.

"Trust me, I wasn't smoking anything," McCrossin said.

The tubes on the course were creatively - and sometimes not so creatively - put together. Flyers fans, who numbered in the hundreds throughout the day, got a kick out of it all.

"They're all different sizes and shapes, but they all made it around," McCrossin said. "It's teamwork, it's fun, it's bonding, it's creativity. Because really, you think about it, isn't that what you need on the ice?"

While it's a day for the prospects to get off the ice, it's also a day for fans to get an up-close look at the potential crop of players who hope to make it to South Philadelphia someday

"It's really good to try and give back to the community and see all the fans," said Flyers forward Scott Laughton, 21, who's in his fourth development camp. "It's good for a lot of the draft picks of this year to meet the fans and see what it's all about."

Laughton joined one of those draft picks later at Stone Harbor Elementary School for a brief hockey clinic with kids. Seventh overall pick Ivan Provorov, who is one-fifth of what McCrossin calls the Flyers' "Fab Five," was one of the fan favorites throughout the day. Provorov is part of an exciting group of five young defensemen many Flyers fans have high hopes for, along with Hagg, Samuel Morin, Travis Sanheim and Shayne Gostisbehere.

The six players took part in passing and shooting drills with young fans outside the school. Then they joined the rest of the group inside for autograph sessions.

The day finished back on 96th Street beach, where teams of two were joined by fans for a three-on-three volleyball tournament.

"It's been good to meet the fans and get to spend some time with the boys off the ice to get more comfortable with the players here," Provorov said. "It's nice to see people coming here watching us. Flyers fans are crazy."

To that notion, McCrossin told the youngsters: "Wait until we get 20,000 people in the Wells Fargo Center and they're screaming . . . because we're going to be winning the Cup."

Sometime down the road, maybe.

Flyers fans can get a further look at the team's prospects when development camp continues today at the Skate Zone in Voorhees, N.J. Players will be on the ice at varying times throughout the day, broken down by position, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.