Three hours until the Olympic TV-fest starts . . .
THE COACHING GAME: John Paddock is the new head coach of the Philadelphia Phantom, the AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. Paddock, a former Brandon Wheat Kings player (1972-74) was fired as head coach of the Ottawa Senators midway through last season despite having a 36-22-6 record. There are those, me among them, who feel he was Emery-boarded. . . . With the Phantoms, Paddock replaces Craig Berube, who has joined the Flyers’ staff as an assistant coach. . . . Also on the Phantoms’ staff are associate coach Kjell Samuelsson, the former NHL defenceman who is back for a ninth season, and goaltending coach Neil Little, who is preparing for season No. 2. . . . Name the only head coach to win AHL championships (the Calder Cup) with three franchises. That would be John Paddock (Hartford WolfPack, Hershey Bears and Maine Mariners). . . .
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THE IMPORT GAME: Have given some thought to Don Campbell’s story in the Ottawa Citizen about the OHL’s discussions on opting out of the CHL’s import draft. . . . Gotta think it’s the wrong way to go. . . . Yes, the system is at least a little bit broken – if there is another draft as convoluted as this one, I don’t know that I have heard of it. This may be the only draft in sports where players are taken by teams that oftentimes have never scouted them and aren’t 100 per cent certain that they will show up at training camp. General managers select players sight unseen, their selection based entirely on the word of an agent with whom they are hoping they have a solid relationship, one that can be counted to hold up draft after draft. This selection process has absolutely nothing to do with taking the best available talent. . . . And we won’t even get into the rumours – anyone reasonably close to major junior hockey has heard them – about money changing hands under the table. -- Having said that, as the Toronto Star’s Sunaya Sapurji points out on her blog, there is nothing that says a team has to take part in the draft. . . . However, with CHL teams charging admission prices and being primarily in the entertainment business, does it not behoove them to work at putting the best available product on the ice? Which should mean a team should be working to find the best available players from the entire scouting field. And if two of those happen to be Europeans, well, so be it.
On her blog, Sapurji also shot down something that has grown to near-mythological proportions in junior hockey circles. That would be the claim that Don Cherry, when he was involved in the ownership of the OHL’s Mississauga IceDogs, never took part in the import draft. Cherry’s reasoning, or so legend has it, was that Canadian hockey leagues should be used to develop Canada (and American?) players.
Well, here’s what Sapurji wrote:
“That would be a good argument, if it were wholly true – but it’s not. The IceDogs, after three seasons of major suckage, decided to draft Europeans – Igor Radulov and Alex Skorohod – for the 2001-02 season, the same season Cherry stepped behind the bench to ‘coach’ the team.
“When asked if Europeans would make his IceDogs more competitive, Cherry told the CBC in June 2001: ‘I think they are or I wouldn’t get them. They can score goals, there’s no doubt about that. But I’m going to be coaching and we would have been competitive without them. But they’ll just make it all the better.’
“Radulov finished second in goals scored (33) that season, one behind leading scorer Patrick O’Sullivan, and was a top scorer with . . . 63 points in 62 games. Skorohod was largely forgettable.
“That season Mississauga finished with a franchise-high 11 wins. It’s scary to think how the IceDogs would have fared without Radulov and there’s no question he made that squad better.”
