Six members of the Kent-based Seattle Thunderbirds have been invited to attend National Hockey League training camps this month.
The Seattle players and the team camps they will attend are:
Right wing Jacob Doty, Florida Panthers; left wing Mitch Elliot and center Luke Lockhart, Washington Capitals; center Colin Jacobs, Buffalo Sabres; left wing Marcel Noebels, Philadelphia Flyers; and goalie Calvin Pickard, Colorado Avalanche.
A total of 150 Western Hockey League players were invited to camps that start this month. Ninety-nine of the invitees were selected in the NHL Entry Draft and 51 are free agents. Forty of the players have been signed to NHL entry-level contracts.
Pickard was drafted in 2010 and Noebels in 2011 and each has signed a contract. Jacobs was drafted in 2011 but has not yet signed. Doty, Elliot and Lockhart are free-agent invitees.
All WHL clubs will send at least three players to camps. All of the players who attend camps are eligible to return to the WHL for the 2011-12 season.
Fifteen members of the Portland Winterhawks will attend camps, the most of any WHL team. The Edmonton Oil Kings, Medicine Hat Tigers and Saskatoon Blades will send 10 players each to camps.
In the 2010-11 NHL season, graduates of the WHL accounted for about 21 percent of the players who played in at least one NHL game.
The Thunderbirds open the 2011-12 season against Portland Sept. 24 at the ShoWare Center.
WHL officials initially had reported that a seventh T-Bird player, Ryan Button, was headed to camp with the Boston Bruins. But T-Bird officials did not list Button as a camp invitee.
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