Lipon turns into big man with Blazers

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Nobody in the Kamloops Blazers’ training camp made a larger impression than JC Lipon, a 16-year-old forward from Regina.
When he arrived here last week, he wasn’t a blip on too many radar screens.
Today, Lipon — his given name is JC — has a signed WHL contract in his hip pocket and a smile on his face.
“It was a hard decision,” Lipon said before participating in the WHL club’s annual Blue/White game Tuesday night at Interior Savings Centre. “But after it was done it felt really good.
“I wasn’t a drafted player . . . I felt like the underdog but it all came together. I never thought I’d be signing but it happened. And now (playing in the WHL) is getting closer.”
Lipon will make his WHL debut Friday when the Blazers meet the Vancouver Giants in Ladner. But he knows it’s too early to look too far into the future.
“If I have to go back to midget AAA for another season, that wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “But I’m signed. I can’t believe it. It’s a big jump.”
A big jump? Evel Knievel would be proud.
“He’s here to make the team,” Blazers general manager Craig Bonner acknowledged.
Which really is something when you consider that just two years ago, Lipon was 5-foot-1 and 95 pounds. When last season ended, he was 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds. Today, he remains 150 pounds, but he is 5-foot-10.
“I sprouted,” said Lipon, who skates like the wind.
“He was small and just wanted to play the game,” said Norm Johnston, a former head coach of the WHL’s Regina Pats who coached Lipon with the midget AAA Regina Pat Canadians last season. “He’s a great kid. He works hard and will get better.”
Lipon said it was Johnston who “took a chance on me as a first-year bantam.”
Johnston gave him a chance last season, too. With the Pat Canadians, Lipon had 13 points in 43 regular-season games and added three points in five playoff games.
Johnston praised Lipon’s work ethic and his desire to learn the game and get better. As Lipon said, “I’m not the smallest guy on the ice but I have to work hard.”
Ken Fox, the Blazers’ head scout, is based in Saskatchewan so is quite familiar with the midget AAA league there. He had been following Lipon’s progress and suggested to Bonner on more than one occasion last season that the Blazers place him on their protected list.
Which is what they did, just a few days before the 2009 bantam draft.
Matt Recchi, the Blazers’ director of player personnel, said he almost immediately heard from Todd Ripplinger, the Pats’ director of scouting, suggesting Kamloops had beaten Lipon’s hometown team to the punch. And so it was that Lipon ended up in the Blazers’ camp.
“It was exciting,” he said of moving up from rookie camp and joining the veteran players. “It was a little faster than rookie camp. I find it more fun. You have to make quicker decisions.”
He skates well enough to play at this level and knows he can speed up his decision-making process. What he has to work on, he said, is learning “how to protect myself in the corners.”
There is more to Lipon than hockey, too.
He plays golf; in fact, he was on his high school’s golf team in Regina.
He also is proficient on a wakeboard, enough so that he has sponsors and has competed on a tour that includes a number of North American cities on its schedule.
He understands, though, that the wakeboarding may be a thing of the past.
“I like hockey a lot better,” he said.
Especially with a signed WHL contract in his possession.
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Team White erased an early 2-0 deficit and beat Team Blue 7-5 before 802 fans in what was a fightless but sometimes feisty camp-ending intrasquad game.
Brett Lyon, Giffen Nyren, Travis Blanleil, C.J. Stretch, Cole Grbavac, Dylan Willick and Jimmy Bubnick, the latter into an empty net, scored for White.
Brendan Ranford had a goal and three assists for Blue, which also got two goals Tyler Shattock and singles from Colin Smith and Chase Souto.
Team White was coached by Blazers head coach Barry Smith and assistant Scott Ferguson, while Team Blue had majority owner Tom Gaglardi and assistant coach Geoff Smith behind the bench. Local lawyer Frank Quinn, perhaps trying to add to his resume, joined Gaglardi on the bench for a third period in which White had a 5-2 edge in scoring.
Sophomore C Jake Trask (groin) was a Team White scratch, while Team Blue lost Slovakian forwards Matej Bene (groin) and Dalibor Bortnak (undisclosed) during the game.
JUST NOTES: The Blazers have signed Willick, who will be 17 on Oct. 19, to a WHL contract. The 5-foot-10, 183-pound Willick, who is from Prince George and played last season for the major midget Cariboo Cougars, was one of the training camp standouts. He had 47 points, including 15 goals, in 40 regular-season games with the Cougars. . . . After playing in Ladner on Friday, the Blazers and Giants will meet here Saturday at 7 p.m.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
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