Parkers yell 'Play Ball' in Victoria

Might Russ Parker be closer than ever to selling the Regina Pats? Hey, let the rumours begin — again.
Parker has long owned the Pats but he never has made any bones about the fact that his first love is baseball.
And now the former owner of the triple-A Calgary Cannons is back in the baseball business — he and his son, Darren, are owners of the Victoria Seals of the Golden Baseball League.
(Brent Parker, another of Russ’s sons, is the Pats’ general manager; he, too, is a huge baseball fan.)
"I've been missing the game," Russ Parker told Cleeve Dheensaw of the Victoria Times-Colonist. "Baseball is not something you take out of your life and then not miss. It was too tempting not to get back into it and this was the perfect opportunity."
The Golden league, a short-season circuit, is centred in the California area but had franchises in Calgary and Edmonton this season. It also has explored the possibilities of putting franchises into Kamloops and Kelowna.
And you have to absolutely love the Parkers choice of a nickname for the Victoria team. Seals was the name of the San Francisco minor league team for which Joe DiMaggio played.
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Read between the lines here and it looks like the Kelowna Rockets and their fans may have seen the last of D Luke Schenn. For the latest on Schenn, who is in camp with the Toronto Maple Leafs, check out this story by Tim Wharnsby of The Globe and Mail.
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G Travis Yonkman, 20, of the Swift Current Broncos will be on the shelf for a while after suffering a shoulder injury Saturday in Saskatoon in a game against the Blades. He will see a shoulder specialist in Saskatoon for further evaluation but it’s believed he could be out for up to a month and might even be looking at surgery to tighten what he says are loose tendons and ligaments. . . . With Yonkman gone, Mark Guggenberger, who was acquired last season from the Portland Winter Hawks, becomes the go-to guy. On Wednesday, when they scored a 3-2 victory over the visiting Red Deer Rebels, the Broncos didn’t list a backup goaltender on either of the scoresheets at whl.ca. Perhaps it was Austin Smith, 15, the 34th overall pick in the 2008 bantam draft out of Calgary?
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AWARDS CORNER: Former WHLer Torrie Wheat, now with the U of Calgary Dinos, is the Canadian Interuniversity Sport male athlete of the week. Wheat, a third-year business student from Nanaimo, B.C., struck for six goals as the Dinos split a two-game weekend series with the UBC Thunderbirds. . . . F Joel Broda of the Moose Jaw Warriors is the CHL player of the week. He had six points in three games, all victories, last week.
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D Luca Sbisa, 18, of the Lethbridge Hurricanes has a signed a three-year, entry level deal with the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. Sbisa was the 19th pick in the 2008 NHL draft. "We consider Luca a good, young prospect for us," said Flyers GM Paul Holmgren in making the announcement. "We are happy to have it done. He has continued to play well for us through training camp. The fact that he is still here (in training camp) shows that we think very highly of him, and at the end of the day, we will do what we feel is right for the organization and what we feel is right for the development of this young player.” Last season, Sbisa, who is from Ozleri, Italy, had 33 points and 63 penalty minutes in 62 games with Lethbridge. He is pointless with eight penalty minutes in four exhibition games with the Flyers.
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The Seattle Thunderbirds are going back to the past for their home-opener, which goes Saturday against the Spokane Chiefs. The Thunderbirds will honour Guyle Fielder, who was a legend with the Seattle Totems of the old Western Hockey League. According to a release from the Thunderbirds: “Fielder was recently inducted into the Washington State Sports Hall of Fame. In the pre-game ceremony he will be presented with his Hall of Fame plaque by Clay Huntington, the executive director of the Washington State Hall of Fame. Fielder will be presented with a special gift from a special member of the Thunderbirds organization. He will also drop the ceremonial first puck for the team's last home opener at Seattle Center. Fielder played with the Totems at the Seattle Coliseum, the precursor to the KeyArena.” . . . Fans will be able to get autographs and have photos taken with Fielder in the first intermission. . . . More from the release: “Fielder became the first pro player anywhere to accumulate 100 points in a season, totaling 122 for the Americans during the 1956-57 season. He was the first professional hockey player to score 2,000 points and finished his career with 2,037 total points.”
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LW Todd Kennedy of the Vancouver Giants has ligament damage in a thumb so will sit for a few days. He was injured in a fight with F Liam Darragh of the Chilliwack Bruins on Sunday. . . . The Columbus Blue Jackets have shipped F Miksim Mayorov, 19, to the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch. Mayorov, a fourth-round pick in the NHL’s 2007 draft, has signed with Columbus. He was selected by the Brandon Wheat Kings in the CHL’s 2008 import draft. All of which means he is one step closer to Brandon. Maybe.
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WEDNESDAY’s HIGHLIGHTS:
In Swift Current, the Broncos won their fifth straight game, coming from behind to beat the Red Deer Rebels, 3-2. . . . The Broncos (5-0-0-0) are off to the best start in franchise history. They opened 4-0 in 2000-01 but played to a tie in their fifth game. . . . Swift Current was 5-0 against Red Deer last season. . . . F Justin Dowling got the winning goal with 3:14 left in the third period. . . . Red Deer (3-2-0-1) led 2-1 after the first period. . . . G Mark Guggenberger stopped 32 shots to improve to 3-0.
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In Saskatoon, F Jeff Lee scored twice and set up another to help the Edmonton Oil Kings to a 4-2 victory over the Blades. . . . F Brent Raedeke, who signed with the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday, had a goal for Edmonton. . . . G Cam Lanigan, 16, stopped 39 shots in his second WHL start for Edmonton (4-2-1-0). . . . The Blades, who are 0-3 at home, slipped to 1-4-0-0. . . . Edmonton C Brenden Dowd had a five-game point streak snapped.
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In Regina, the Pats won for the first time, beating the Moose Jaw Warriors, 7-3. . . . The teams were tied late in the second period but the Pats (1-2-0-2) scored the game’s last four goals. . . . That was the first WHL victory for Dale Derkatch, the Pats’ new head coach. . . . The Warriors (3-3-0-0) had a three-game winning streak snapped. . . . RW Jordan Eberle had two goals and a helper for the Pats, while freshman C Jordan Weal had a goal and two assists. Weal, a 17-year-old from North Vancouver, has 10 points in five games. . . . Regina D Victor Bartley was plus-4. . . . The Pats were 1-for-10 on the PP and now are 2-for-28 on the season. Yikes! . . . D Travis Hamonic scored twice for Moose Jaw.
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In Kelowna, C Colin Long, a 100-point man last season, scored twice as the Rockets doubled the Everett Silvertips, 4-2. . . . Long also set up a goal and now has seven points in three games. . . . The Rockets (3-2-0-0) have won three in a row. . . . D Tyler Myers, who returned from Buffalo Sabres earlier in the week, scored the Rockets’ first goal on a PP to tie the game 1-1. . . . Kelowna, which torched Kamloops for seven PP goals in two weekend victories, was 2-for-6 on the PP. . . . The Silvertips (2-2-1-0) got goals from freshman forwards Ryan White and Kellan Tochkin, each of whom notched his first WHL goal.
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In Chilliwack, D Jeff Einhorn, the 16th performer in the circus, scored to give the Chilliwack Bruins a 2-1 victory over the Spokane Chiefs. . . . The Bruins (2-1-1-0) won the shootout, 3-2. . . . Chilliwack G Lucas Gore stopped 30 shots through 65 minutes, while Spokane’s James Reid stopped 32. . . . LW Levko Koper gave Spokane (3-1-0-1) a 1-0 lead at 1:19 of the first period. . . . LW Ryan Howse tied it on the PP at 1:50 of the second. . . . Spokane D Brett Bartman, who was plus-6 in a 6-2 victory in Kamloops on Tuesday, was plus-1.
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And, finally, it sounds like Theo Fleury has written — or provided the fodder for — another book.
Here’s Adrian Dater of the Denver Post, from his blog:
Theo Fleury fans - and you still see some Avs fans with his jersey at games - might be interested in a coming book he “wrote.”
It supposedly has lots of juicy stuff, and here’s an advance quote he gave to the publisher, Triumph Books:
“I think that people need to understand why. What it was that made me do what I did. I knew I was crazy insane and so did everyone else,” Fleury writes. “I didn’t hang out on the surface. I would go five, six, seven, eight levels below the streets of New York and party with people I didn’t know. Freaks, transvestites, all kinds of shady people. Or I’d be walking home from a game dressed in my custom made suit from Giovanni’s in Montreal and I’d stop and buy three or four bottles of wine. Then I’d head for the Chelsea Piers between 23rd Street and the Hudson River and hang with homeless guys around a burn barrel shooting the sh*t. I would ask them how they got there. I’ve always been interested by that kind of stuff. The Rangers must have been shitting bricks.”