Chase De Leo got a rough introduction to Canuck Nation on Sunday night.
“I don’t know what happened,” De Leo, a 16-year-old from La Mirada, Calif., said on Monday night. “Holy cow!”
De Leo is in his freshman season with the Portland Winterhawks. After putting up 30 points in 60 regular-season games, he still is looking for his first playoff point.
He and his teammates were in Kamloops on Sunday, preparing for last  night’s WHL playoff game against the Blazers at Interior Savings Centre.
Holed up in their hotel, the Winterhawks watched the Los Angeles Kings skate to a 1-0 victory over the Canucks.
De Leo, a Californian, obviously is enjoying the fact that his Kings, the eighth seed, hold a 3-0 lead over the No. 1 Canucks in the best-of-seven series.
And so it was that Portland forward Nic Petan, a Delta, B.C., native who turned 17 on March 22, unknowingly started something when he tweeted: “We need Danny.”
To which De Leo, wanting to needle his best friend, responded with:
“Need a lot more then those 2 girls back together. weeeeeoooooo.”
They were, of course, referring to the injured Daniel Sedin and his twin brother, Henrik.
Prior to last night’s game, De Leo said: “Me and Petan are really best friends. We obviously are going to go at it, because he’s a Vancouver boy and I’m an L.A. boy. That’s how it all started.”
Immediately after making that tweet, De Leo and Petan headed downstairs in their hotel for a team meeting. While they were away the tide got rolling.
When De Leo got back to his room he checked his Twitter account “and it was just . . . so many mean tweets,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting that at all. I didn’t mean anything. We were just joking around.
“Holy cow! It went to the next level.”
De Leo, who has more than 900 followers, said he received between 40 and 50 nasty tweets.
“All about how I’m such a classless guy and how I’m never going to make it past the WHL,” he said. “Just the meanest stuff ever.
“They just took it way too . . . I don’t know.”
When he realized that was happening, De Leo sent out another tweet: “Holy cow, it was a joke everyone!! Sorry if I offended you.”
Later, he closed the subject with: “Bad joke I guess? haha Receiving mean hate tweets like no other :( #HeartBroken.”
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The NHL’s Edmonton Oilers have yet to make a decision, at least not publicly, on the immediate future of head coach Tom Renney. But there is plenty of smoke involving the possibility that Brent Sutter could end up coaching the Oilers. George Johnson of the Calgary Herald explores that possibility right here.
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THE COACHING GAME:
The New York Islanders have dropped assistant coaches Dean Chynoweth and Scott Allen. Chynoweth, the eldest son of the late Ed Chynoweth, who ran the WHL for so long, played in the WHL with the Medicine Hat Tigers, with whom he won two Memorial Cups, and also coached in Seattle (2000-04) and Swift Current (2004-09). . . .
The NHL’s Dallas Stars are redoing the coaching staff of the AHL’s Texas Stars. On Monday, Dallas released Texas head coach Jeff Pyle and assistant coach Jeff Truitt. Truitt coached in the WHL with the Lethbridge Hurricanes (1993-96) and Kelowna Rockets (2000-07), and also did a turn as director of hockey operations with the Moose Jaw Warriors (2009-10). . . .
The NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets have announced that Rob Riley won’t return for a third season as head coach of the AHL’s Springfield Falcons. The Blue Jackets said Monday that his contract won’t be renewed.
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JUST NOTES:
F Michael Ferland of the Brandon Wheat Kings has joined the Abbotsford Heat, the AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Calgary Flames. Ferland was a fifth-round round selection by the Flames in the 2010 NHL draft. The 19-year-old from Brandon had 96 points, including 47 goals, this season. . . .
Shaw TV will show the Eastern Conference final between the Edmonton Oil Kings and Moose Jaw Warriors. That series opens Friday in Edmonton. . . .
Colin Day, the longtime president of the Kamloops Blazers, died on Friday. He was 70 when he passed away in Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. There is more right here.
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MONDAY’S GAMES:
Both Western Conference semifinal series will be decided on Wednesday night with a pair of Game 7s. . . . The Tri-City Americans and Spokane Chiefs will scrap in Kennewick, Wash., while the Kamloops Blazers, having erased a 3-0 deficit, will try to complete the amazing comeback against the Winterhawks in Portland.
A tweet from @WHLFacts: 170 - The number of WHL playoff games that have been played since the last Game 7 (March 31, 2010) . . .

In Spokane, F Liam Stewart scored at 9:33 of OT to give the Chiefs a 4-3 victory over the Tri-City Americans and even the series at 3-3. . . . Stewart has three playoff goals. . . . According to a post-game news release from the Chiefs: “After the game Stewart described the goal as the ‘biggest of his career’ and said that he simply ‘closed my eyes and hoped for the best’.” . . . Tri-City F Patrick Holland tied the game 3-3 at 18:31 of the second period. . . . F Mitch Holmberg scored this 10th goal of these playoffs for Spokane. That gave the Chiefs a 2-1 lead at 6:28 of the first and they took that into the second period. . . . Tri-City F Justin Feser tied it with a shorthanded goal at 8:47. . . . Spokane F Steven Kuhn gave the Chiefs a 3-2 lead at 9:20 on a PP. . . . The Chiefs are 4-0 in OT in these playoffs; the Americans are 1-3. . . . Spokane was 2-4 on the PP; the Americans were 0-3. . . . Chiefs G Eric Williams stopped 27 shots, seven more than Tri-City’s Ty Rimmer. . . . The Americans had a 3-2 edge in shots in OT. . . . John Blanchette of the Spokane Spokesman-Review was there and his report is right here. . . .

In Kamloops, the Blazers scored five third-period goals and beat the Portland Winterhawks, 7-6. . . . Portland took a 5-2 lead into the third period. . . . The Blazers tied it with three goals in 3:05. . . . Kamloops F Colin Smith gave Kamloops its first lead, 6-5, at 15:21 of the third with a PP snipe. . . . Portland F Cam Reid tied it 26 seconds later. . . . Kamloops D Bronson Maschmeyer got the winner on a slapshot from the middle point through traffic with 20.6 seconds left in regulation time. . . . Maschmeyer had two goals and an assist, while F Brendan Ranford had a goal and two helpers, and F Brendan Herrod drew three assists. . . . Portland got two PP goals and an assist from F Brad Ross. D Derrick Pouliot had a goal and two assists. . . . Kamloops had a 21-9 edge in shots in the third period. . . . Kamloops was 2-5 on the PP. Portland, which had been 0-13 on the PP over the previous three games, was 3-5.


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These are Happy Days for Spike

Greg (Spike) Wallace has watched a lot of WHL games during his
career with the Kamloops Blazers and Victoria Cougars.
(Photo by Murray Mitchell / Kamloops Daily News)

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor

Brendan Ranford, the longest-serving member of this edition of the Kamloops Blazers, says Greg (Spike) Wallace is a “legend.”
Upon hearing that, Ryan Huska, a former Blazers player who now is head coach of the Kelowna Rockets, bursts into laughter.
“That was one of his nicknames,” Huska says. “He had so many nicknames and that was one of them.”
The legend of Spike Wallace will grow again tonight at Interior Savings Centre as he is to be presented with a WHL Distinguished Service Award prior to a game between the Blazers and Portland Winterhawks.
According to the WHL, the award is “presented annually to an individual associated with the WHL who has made an extraordinary contribution over an extended period of time” to the league or a team. The late Doris Rubel, the Blazers’ long-time billet co-ordinator, was honoured with the award during 2004-05.
“I’m pretty thrilled,” says Wallace, 54, who is the Blazers’ community and sponsorship co-ordinator. “Only one person in each conference wins it every year. So to be selected, I was thrilled.
“I realize it’s the teams that I have worked with and the players and management we have had over the years that have helped me.”
As for the nickname, he has been wearing it since he was in Grade 8, or ever since someone noticed a resemblance between him and the character Spike, who was Fonzie’s nephew, on early episodes of the then-popular TV show Happy Days.
These days, Wallace no longer orders skates and tapes ankles. Instead, he keeps busy booking player appearances throughout the community, including numerous school visits, working with a couple of programs involving minor hockey, and keeping in touch with the RCMP as part of the EDGE program.
In other words, tonight is a long way from the days when he started with the organization.
In fact, his first stint with Kamloops lasted about 10 days and, as Wallace says, “I never worked a day for them.”
Wallace, a Kamloops native, signed on as the trainer/equipment manager for the Kamloops Jr. Oilers over the summer of 1982. However, the team, then owned by the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers, soon hired a new general manager and head coach in Bill LaForge and he brought along is own trainer, Ron Coleman.
Wallace was released without having worked even one day at his new job.
He followed up by sending his resume to the Victoria Cougars and soon was on his way to Vancouver Island where Dave Andrews, now the president of the American Hockey League, was the head coach.
In the meantime, the winds of change were blowing through Kamloops where a group of local businessmen banded together and purchased the Jr. Oilers. The franchise was renamed the Blazers and soon had a new trainer.
Wallace had reapplied after the franchise changed hands. He met head coach Ken Hitchcock at an under-16 tournament at the Sungod Recreation Centre in Delta, and later spent some time with Gary Cooper and Colin Day, both of whom were involved in purchasing the club.
“I figured a Kamloops guy could have the job here so I reapplied,” Wallace says.
The rest, as they say, is history and it isn’t at all farfetched to suggest that after all these years he is the face of the franchise in the community.
“He was a lot of things to us when we played here,” says Huska, who won three Memorial Cup titles during his time (1992-95) with the Blazers. “Not only was he our trainer and equipment guy around the dressing room, he was a good friend to a lot of the guys here. Players felt comfortable with him. . . . He did a great job of running our room and keeping young guys happy and feeling part of the group.”
Even though Wallace no longer is a regular in the Blazers’ dressing room, he still has relationships with the players.
“He’s got a lot of stories that he tells us about being in the old room . . . he’s been around for a while, you can say that,” Ranford says. “He’s good friends with Ken Hitchcock and he still keeps in touch with a lot of players who are in the NHL. You hear the names and you’re in awe because those players, even when I was growing up, were in the NHL and they are elite hockey players.”
Huska says the friendships are part and parcel of being in the Kamloops organization.
“You feel a part of something here and he was a big part of that,” Huska says. “When the old guys come back he always hunts them down and guys always make sure they go out of their way to find him as well. That says a lot about him and what he means to each individual player and this organization.”
JUST NOTES: Game time at Interior Savings Centre is 7 p.m. . . . The Winterhawks (46-16-4) lead the WHL’s overall standings, by one point over the Edmonton Oil Kings and Tri-City Americans. The Blazers (44-17-4) are three points back. . . . The Blazers put playoff tickets on sale yesterday. They are likely to open at home on March 23 and 24. . . . Kamloops is 15-2-2 against U.S. Division teams. That includes a 1-2-0 record against Portland. . . . The Blazers list F Chase Schaber as day-to-day with a lower body injury. He appeared to injure his left leg late in the first period of Friday’s 6-3 loss to the visiting Kelowna Rockets, although he did finish the game. Schaber, who was plagued by leg injuries last season, played in Saturday’s 4-3 OT loss in Kelowna.


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