Tweet! Tweet! Virtanen breaks the news

D Ryan Button (Prince Albert, Seattle, 2007-11) has signed a one-year contract with the Iserlohn Roosters (Germany, DEL). Last season, with the Texas Stars (AHL), he had three goals in 26 games. He also had 23 points, including seven goals in 26 games with the Idaho Steelheads (ECHL).
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1. WHL teams will start training camps in about four weeks time, and the Regina Pats still don’t have a head coach. In fact, they are the only WHL team without a head coach. They are short two assistant coaches, as well. . . . Greg Harder of the Regina Leader-Post has the latest right here.
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2. The Vancouver Canucks have signed F Jake Virtanen of the Calgary Hitmen to a three-year entry-level contract. Virtanen, from Abbotsford, B.C., was the sixth overall selection in the NHL’s 2014 draft. He had 71 points, including 45 goals, in 71 games with the Hitmen last season, his second in the WHL. The Hitmen selected him with the first overall pick in the 2011 bantam draft. . . . In what surely is a sign of the times, Virtanen broke the news of his signing via his Twitter account.
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3. The Saskatoon Blades have signed F Wyatt Sloboshan, 17, to a WHL contract. Sloboshan was a third-round selection by the Swift Current Broncos in the 2012 bantam draft. The Blades acquired him in January as part of a deal in which F Nathan Burns went to Swift Current. From Vanscoy, Sask., Sloboshan had 77 points, including 27 goals, in 45 games with a midget team at the Okanagan Hockey Academy.
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4. The Edmonton Oil Kings have added Ryan Marsh to their coaching staff as the lead assistant under head coach Steve Hamilton. Marsh 39, has been an assistant coach with the U of Alberta Golden Bears for the past two seasons and the hockey director for Vimy Ridge Academy for 12 years. . . . Hamilton and Marsh are friends, having coached together with the AJHL’s Spruce Grove Saints and Fort Saskatchewan Traders. They also worked together at Vimy Ridge.
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5. Dustin Forbes is the new play-by-play voice of the Lethbridge Hurricanes. He takes over from Pat Siedlecki, who lost his spot when CJOC chose not to get involved in bidding for a new contract. . . . The Hurricanes will be heard on Rock 106 when the new season begins. . . . Forbes spent last season with the BCHL’s Cowichan Capitals. He also has done play-by-play for the SJHL’s La Ronge Ice Wolves and the junior B Richmond Sockeyes and Comox Valley Glacier Kings.
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6. The CFL hit the big time on Friday . . . the really, really big time. ESPN.com carried a story on the goings-on Thursday in Edmonton that culminated Friday morning when Connor Croken, 20, claimed the winnings from the 50-50 draw that was held during the game between the Eskimos and Calgary Stampeders. Croken showed up to let them know the $322,216 was his. He'll be back Tuesday to pick up his cheque. . . . The ESPN piece is right here.
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Welcome back to the @TheWHL @rmarsh19 nothing like another Quesnel boy sportin the suit n tie behind the bench. Good luck.
— Mitch Love (@mlovehockey) July 25, 2014

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Oil Kings sign assistant coach . . . Clouston, Speltz to U-18 team

F Juraj Rožník (Swift Current, Regina, 2010-11) has signed a tryout contract with Dukla Trenčín (Slovakia, Extraliga). Last season, with Martin (Slovakia, Extraliga), he had 10 points, including six goals, in 41 games. . . .
F David Hruška (Red Deer, 1995-96) has signed a one-year contract with Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic, Extraliga) after Karlovy Vary negotiated his release from Orli Znjomo (Czech Republic, Erste Bank Liga). Last season, with Chomutov (Czech Republic, Extraliga), he had 32 points, 18 of them goals, in 52 games. . . .
F Radek Duda (Regina, Lethbridge, 1998-2000) has signed a one-year contract with Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic, Extraliga). Duda played last season with Plzen (Czech Republic, Extraliga), leading the team in scoring with 41 points, including 17 goals, in 47 games. He was second in the league with 141 penalty minutes. . . .
F Grant Toulmin (Swift Current, 2005-07, 2008-09) has signed a one-year contract with Heilbronner Falken (Germany, DEL2). Last season, with Nipissing University (CIS) in North Bay, Ont., he had 38 points, including 16 goals, in 28 games. . . .
D Kalvin Sagert (Kamloops, Lethbridge, Prince George, 2002-08) has signed a one-year contract with Miskolci Jegesmedvék (Hungary, MOL-Liga). Last season, he had one assist in 11 games with the Wichita Thunder (CHL), 10 assists in 24 games with the San Francisco Bulls (ECHL), and a goal and three assists in 32 games with the Kalamazoo Wings (ECHL).
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1. Ryan Marsh has signed on with the Memorial Cup-champion Edmonton Oil Kings as an assistant coach. Marsh (Tri-City, 1992-95) played four seasons at the U of Alberta in Edmonton before going on to a brief pro career. He has been with Vimy Ridge Academy in Edmonton for 15 years, the past 10 as campus director. He also was an assistant coach with the U of Alberta Golden Bears. . . . The 39-year-old native of Quesnel, B.C., moves into the spot created when Steve Hamilton was promoted from assistant coach to head coach. Hamilton took over from Derek Laxdal, now the head coach of the AHL’s Texas Stars. . . . Sean Brown also is on the Oil Kings’ staff as an assistant coach.
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2. Shaun Clouston, the general manager and head coach of the Medicine Hat Tigers, has been added to the coaching staff of the Canadian U-18 team that will play in the Ivan Hlinka Memorial tournament next month. . . . Clouston replaces Eric Veilleux, who now is the head coach of the AHL’s Norfolk Admirals. . . . Clouston, 46, has been with the Tigers since 2003-04. He has been the head coach for four seasons and the GM for the past two. . . . At the same time, Tim Speltz, the general manager of the Spokane Chiefs, has been added to the Program of Excellence management group. Speltz, 56, replaces Mark Hunter, the GM of the OHL’s London Knights, who isn’t available for the Ivan Hlinka Memorial. Speltz has been the Chiefs’ GM since 1990. . . . Team Canada’s selection camp is scheduled for Calgary’s Markin MacPhail Centre, Aug. 2-5. There should be 44 players in attendance, with 22 of them going on to play for Canada. The tournament is to run Aug. 11-16 in Breclav, Czech Republic, and Piestany, Slovakia.
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3. It’s hardly scientific and it’s a far cry from being official, but readers of this blog have spoken. Asked which of three teams should play host to the 2016 Memorial Cup, 47.9 per cent of respondents voted for the Red Deer Rebels. The Victoria Royals drew 34.1 per cent, with the Vancouver Giants at 17.9 per cent. . . . The 2016 Memorial Cup tournament is to be played in a WHL city; those three teams have said they will be involved in the bidding. . . . The Memorial Cup hasn’t been decided in Alberta since 1974 when the Regina Pats won it in the Calgary Corral.
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4. F Tim Bozon of the Kootenay Ice, who spent March in a Saskatoon hospital battling Neisseria meningitis, is preparing to play in a competitive game for the first time since Feb. 28. Bozon, 20, will play for France’s U-23 team at a tournament in Ostrava, Czech Republic, next week. . . . Tal Pinchevsky of nhl.com has more right here.
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5. Earlier in the week, Elliotte Friedman of Hockey Night in Canada posted his final 30 Thoughts of the season, which means 2013-14 finally is over. Because it was his last post for the season, Friedman actually had at least 54 thoughts. . . . It’s all right here.
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6. So there’s this beer league in Buffalo . . . it’s the Performax Hockey League. And when the guys got together the other night, they had a visitor. This guy lit it up for five goals. He also had five assists. Patrick Kane. You may have heard of him. . . . There’s more right here, including a great post-game tweet.
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7. Running back Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens has been suspended for, uhh, two games for precipitating an incident of domestic abuse. The disciplinary move has come in for considerable criticism, none of it any harsher than this column right here by Michael Powell of The New York Times.
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Alan Caldwell, over at Small Thoughts at Large, tweeted this on Thursday: “The annual WHL prospects postings are coming to the blog soon, likely starting later today.” You will find them on his blog and there’s a link over there on the right. . . . Former Portand Winterhawks D Brad Symes has died in his hometown of Edmonton, where he was a firefighter. He was 38. There is more right here. . . . The Simon Fraser U men’s hockey team will play exhibition road games against the Bowling Green Falcons on Oct. 4 and the Miami U RedHawks on Oct. 5. Those games are scheduled for Bowling Green, Ohio, and Oxford, Ohio.
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Flights delayed cause the president wants to fly home out of LAX.. Your world we're just living in it #ThanksObama
— Mitch Callahan (@Mcally15) July 24, 2014

Looks like I will be wearing black and green next year at U of S! #huskies
— Jordon Cooke (@jordoncooke30) July 25, 2014

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It wasn’t that long ago when it was awfully hard to purchase a season ticket to the Kelowna Rockets. But that isn’t the case these days. The Rockets have scheduled an open house for Saturday at Prospera Place and have let it be known that 400 season tickets are available.
“The tickets are a combination of ones that were let go this year,” Gavin Hamilton, the team’s vice-president of business development, told Kelowna radio station AM 1150. “We had a group that are retired now and are traveling more in the winter time so aren't around for the second half of the year, so that is where a bulk of those came from."
A year ago, the Rockets put 350 season tickets into circulation. That marked the first time season tickets had been available since before the team played host to the 2004 Memorial Cup.
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Meanwhile, in Brandon, the Wheat Kings revealed that they have sold 1,969 season tickets; they had sold more than 2,200 at this time last year.
Last season, the Wheat Kings sold more than 2,900 season tickets; they averaged more than 4,100 fans for home games.
“I always make refence to really it’s Oct. 1 before you know for sure where you’re gong to end up with your season tickets,” Brandon owner and GM Kelly McCrimmon told a news conference, “but when we’re behind like we are, it’s a little bit concerning, and it could be a variety of things: Weather, people away, obviously July and August aren’t months where people are thinking about buying hockey tickets. It’s something that picks up a lot more in September, so again I think (the team is) not alarmed, but just a bit concerned that we need to get moving with those numbers.”
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THE COACHING GAME:
Ryan Marsh is the new lead assistant coach with the U of Alberta Golden Bears,  according to Evan Daum of the Edmonton Journal. Marsh, 37, played three seasons (1992-95) with the Tri-City Americans. He then played a season in the ECHL before spending four winters playing for the Golden Bears. He will join Alberta head coach Ian Herbers, who is heading into his first season after leaving the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals. . . . Marsh is the director of the hockey program at the Edmonton-based Vimy Ridge Hockey Academy. . . . Daum’s story is right here. . . .
The QMJHL’s Gatineau Olympiques have added Eric Landry to their coaching staff under head coach Benoit Groulx. Landry will work alongside fellow assistant coach Guy Lalonde. . . . Landry, who played two full seasons (1993-95) with the QMJHL’s St. Hyacinthe Lasers, has retired after playing the last nine seasons in Europe. . . . The Olympiques open camp Tuesday.


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