Winterhawks' Swiss star making noise over here

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Over its history, the WHL has had a lot of players who were recognizable by their nicknames.
Going back to the early, early days, Ron Chipperfield was, yes, Chipper. Daryl Reaugh was Razor; in fact, he still is. Craig Bonner, today the general manager of the Kamloops Blazers, was and is Bones. Rat? That was Dale Derkatch. Weasel? Theo Fleury. Brad Moran was Bugsy. Don Nachbaur was and is Snack. . . .
There was Syds and Recchs and Smitty and Fergy and Nixie and Bends and Barts, Deano and Wardo, Wieber and Shatts, the Missing Link, Little Brutus and the Boogeyman. Kruise Reddick is known as Pokey. Craig Cunningham is Richie.
The point is that while most players are known by a nickname of some sort — today’s monikers lean more towards the unimaginative Greener, Whitey, Smitty, etc. — the WHL has never had a player known simply by his first name.
You know, like Kareem or LeBron or Peyton or Kobe . . .
Until now.
Tonight, Kamloops fans have an opportunity to watch Nino Niederreiter, the 17-year-old star of the Swiss national junior team who plays for the Portland Winterhawks. They meet the Blazers, 7 p.m., at Interior Savings Centre.
If you watched the World Junior Championship, you heard fans in Saskatoon yelling his name as he scored twice to take down the Russians, 3-2, in overtime.
“NINO! NINO!! NINO!!!” the fans chanted as Niederreiter scored in the last minute of the third period and again in extra time to give Switzerland its first-ever world junior victory over Russia. That victory also sent the Swiss into a semifinal, where it lost 6-1 to Canada. But it meant a chance at a bronze medal, something that went by the wayside with an 11-4 loss to Sweden.
Still . . . the hockey world today knows Nino.
“It was crazy up there,” Niederreiter told Scott Sepich, a freelancer who writes for The Oregonian. “It’s such a big sport in Canada. To have them chanting my name like that in the Russia game almost made me cry.”
Niederreiter was one of a handful of 17-year-olds in what traditionally has been a tournament for 19-year-olds. That didn’t stop him from putting up 10 points, six of them goals, in seven games and being named to the tournament all-star team.
No wonder he had more than 12,000 fans screaming his name.
Before leaving to join his Swiss buddies in Saskatchewan, Niederreiter was making a name for himself in WHL circles. In 37 games, he had 41 points, including 23 goals. He was leading all WHL freshmen in goals and points when he left; he still leads them in goals.
Mike Johnston, Portland’s general manager and head coach, says Niederreiter has been everything they expected . . . and a whole lot more.
“As a teammate, the guys love him,” Johnston says. “He’s very competitive. And he’s a good player . . . a good all-around player. He plays physical. He’s going to be a good playoff player. He does a little bit of everything for you.”
Johnston used words like “energy” and “enthusiasm” when talking about Niederreiter, who is from Chur, a town of about 33,000 people that is 120 kilometres southeast of Zurich.
Johnston took over as GM and head coach the Winterhawks early last season as part of an ownership change. At that point, the franchise was a mess — the Winterhawks would finish fifth in the U.S. Division for a third straight season.
Today, the Winterhawks are not just in the chase for a division pennant; they are third in the Western Conference. Niederreiter has played a huge role in the transformation.
Johnston and Travis Green, the former WHLer and ex-pro who is Portland’s assistant GM/assistant coach, spent time in Europe during their careers and have a lot of international contacts, which is how they first got on to Niederreiter.
“We had heard all he wanted to do was play in North America,” Johnston says. “That was his whole goal . . . he wanted to play in NHL. We had heard he was a great kid, great personality.”
As it happened, Johnston was head coach of Team Canada at the IIHF’s U18 world championship in Fargo, N.D., last spring. As Canada was preparing to play Switzerland, whose roster included a 16-year-old Niederreiter, Johnston ran into Steve Spott, the GM and head coach of the OHL’s Kitchener Rangers and an assistant coach with Canada’s national junior team.
Johnston recalls: “Spott said, ‘Hey, you better watch this kid from Switzerland. This Niederreiter kid could control a game on his own.’ ”
Having watched him in Grand Forks, then, Johnston made the decision.
“We weren’t sure,” Johnston recalls, noting that Niederreiter really didn’t have much of a resume, “but we felt we were getting a great kid, a highly motivated kid and (there werent’ any) strings attached.”
In other words, Niederreiter would be available in the CHL’s import draft and there weren’t any agents trying to dictate where he would and wouldn’t play.
“He was thrilled to be coming here,” Johnston says.
So the Winterhawks dealt a fourth-round pick in the 2010 bantam draft and a sixth-rounder in 2011 to the Moose Jaw Warriors in order to move up t hree spots — from fifth to second. And with the second pick, Johnston took Niederreiter.
“I didn’t necessarily think he was the elite of the elite, but I knew he was a good player,” Johnston says. “We felt in the end he was the best person . . . we felt so strong that we decided to make the trade with Moose Jaw.”
And the Winterhawks haven’t looked back. Neither has Niederreiter.
He plays on a line with sophomore Brad Ross, the younger brother of former Blazers defenceman Nick Ross, and freshman Ryan Johansen, a seventh-round pick in the 2008 bantam draft who played last season for the BCHL’s Penticton Vees.
“The chemistry I was hoping would work out — once we convinced Johansen to come in here — between Ross, Niederreiter and Johansen has been really good for us,” Johnston says, in something of an understatement. When NHL Central Scouting’s midseason rankings came out Monday, Niederreiter was at No. 14, with Johansen 16th and Ross 69th.
In the end, though, this is all about Niederreiter, the Swiss sensation.
“He loves the game,” says Johnston, a former Vancouver Canucks assistant coach who compares Niederreiter’s attitude to defenceman Ed Jovanovski. “In Vancouver, I worked with Ed Jovanovski. When he came to the rink every day he had a smile on his face. He loved to play. With that type of energy and enthusiasm, most nights they’re going to give you a great effort. And that’s all you can ask.
“Nino will come to the rink in the morning, do his schoolwork and then you’ll see him out there shooting pucks or practising a certain move. He’s always working on things.
“He just loves to play.”

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
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