Showing posts with label Tom Lynn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Lynn. Show all posts

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Rebels add two to roster . . . 2019 WJC to Vancouver/Victoria . . . Check out Lynn's book

F Bud Holloway (Seattle, 2003-08) has signed a contract for the rest of this season with Skellefteå (Sweden, SHL). He was released by CSKA Moscow (Russia, KHL) on Nov. 18 after recording three goals and six assists in 12 games. . . . Holloway has played three seasons (2011-14) for Skellefteå. He was the SHL’s leading scorer with 71 points, including 51 assists, in 55 games, and won the league’s MVP award in 2012-13.
-———
The Red Deer Rebels have added F Matt Campese and D Jacob Herauf to their roster.
Campese, who will turn 19 on Dec. 10, was released by the Kamloops Blazers early this season and has been with the BCHL’s West Kelowna Warriors. He has 17 points, including six goals, in 15 games with
the Warriors. A third-round pick of the Victoria Royals in the 2012 WHL bantam draft, he has 10 goals and six assists in 95 career regular-season games — 16 with the Royals and 79 with Kamloops. He is the son of former WHL goaltender/coach/general manager Bruno Campese, who now scouts for the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights.
Herauf, 16, has been with the midget AAA Sherwood Park, Alta., Kings. The Rebels selected him with the 16th overall pick of the 2015 bantam draft. He already has played nine games with the Rebels this season, recording one assist.
Why the additions? Perhaps because Red Deer GM/head coach Brent Sutter is looking for more out of his roster.
When Greg Meachem of reddeerrebels.com asked Sutter about his club’s play after a 4-3 OT victory over the visiting Saskatoon Blades on Wednesday, the response was: “Truthfully? I’m not a very happy camper right now. I wasn’t happy at all with the way we played the second period. We took some dumb penalties. We do self-inflicted things that hurt us and we don’t stick to what allows us to be a good team.
“We played well in the first period and did some good things in the third. When we keep the game simple, play straight lines, do things right and have a good transition where we’re getting pucks back up the ice, we play well and we’ve proven it at different times this (season).”
The Rebels’ inconsistent play has been bothering Sutter for some time now. It would seem he is going to try and fix it by bringing in competition for the players on his roster.
The addition of Campese also provides some depth should the Rebels lost F Michael Spacek and/or F Adam Musil to the Czech Republic’s national junior team.
The Rebels (13-11-4) got into the weekend in second place in the Central Division. They are 4-4-2 in their previous 10 games. They also are 13 points behind the Medicine Hat Tigers (21-5-1), but just three ahead of the Lethbridge Hurricanes (12-11-3), who have won five in a row.
——
Hockey Canada and the CHL announced on Thursday afternoon that a bid from Vancouver and Victoria to play host to the 2019 World Junior Championship has been selected.
Included in the bid are the cities of Vancouver and Victoria, along with Sport Hosting Vancouver, Sport Host Victoria, Tourism Victoria, the Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Giants and Victoria Royals, and BC Hockey.
The Vancouver/Victoria bid won out over others from Calgary/Edmonton, Saskatoon/Winnipeg and London/Windsor.
The tournament last was played in B.C. in 2006 when there were games in Kamloops, Kelowna and Vancouver. Attendance totalled 325,138 for that event. The 2019 tournament will be played in Vancouver and Victoria. Whichever pool includes Canada will play out of Rogers Place in Vancouver; the other pool will play in the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in Victoria.
The Vancouver/Victoria organizing committee will be co-chaired by Ron Toigo, the managing director of Shato Holdings and the majority owner of the Giants, and Barry Petrachenko, the CEO of BC Hockey.
The 2017 tournament opens on Boxing Day and will be played in Toronto and Montreal. Those cities also played host in 2015, while last year’s tournament was held in Helsinki, Finland. The 2018 tournament is to be played in Buffalo.
The awarding of the 2019 tournament to Vancouver/Victoria means that the tournament will have been played in North America four times in a five-year stretch.
This also will signal to smaller markets — once and for all — that they need not waste their time or money getting involved in the bidding process. It’s all about the guarantee and having a guarantor in place to cover losses if that guarantee isn’t met.
The decision to award the 2019 event to Vancouver/Victoria is “another rejection for London and Windsor — and all smaller junior hockey markets who still hold increasingly diminishing hopes they’ll ever get to stage a world junior hockey championship,” writes Morris Dalla Costa of the London Free Press. . . .That piece is right here.
The 2021 WJC also is to be played in Canada, and you can bet everything you own that it will go to Calgary and Edmonton.
——
The Kelowna Rockets will have two of their players in the 2017 World Junior Championship. F Calvin Thukauf is to join Team Switzerland in Oshawa as it prepares for the tournament that opens Boxing Day in Toronto and Montreal. F Tomas Soustal will join Czech Republic in Montreal. Both players are scheduled to leave Kelowna on Dec. 12. . . . Team Russia released its preliminary roster on Thursday and it included one WHLer — D Sergey Zborovskiy of the Regina Pats. He is one of 12 defencemen on the preliminary roster. The Russians will hold a pre-tournament camp in Kingston, Ont. Zborovskiy is to leave Regina on Dec. 18.
——

G Carter Hart of the Everett Silvertips has posted three straight shutouts, meaning he is one shy of the WHL record that has been held by Chris Worthy of the Flin Flon Bombers for almost 50 years. Worthy put up four in a row from Dec. 29, 1967, through Jan. 13, 1968. . . . Hart has gone 187 minutes 1 second without allowing a goal. Worthy holds that record, too, at 265:13. . . . Hart’s next test comes tonight, assuming that he is Everett’s starter, when the Silvertips play host to the Medicine Hat Tigers. This game matches the WHL’s highest-scoring team, the Tigers, against the stingiest, the Silvertips. . . . The Tigers (21-5-1) have won 10 in a row and lead the overall standings by one point over the Silvertips (19-3-4), who have won four straight.
——
As you no doubt are aware, the NHL will have a new franchise in play next season — the Vegas Golden Knights. Their front office is full of men with ties to the WHL, including Kelly McCrimmon, Bob Lowes, Vaughn Karpan, Erin Ginnell, Bruno Campese, Murray Craven and Jim McKenzie. . . . If you are interested in what goes into putting an NHL expansion team together and getting it on the ice, get a copy of Tom Lynn’s book How to Bake an NHL Franchise from Scratch: The First Era of the Minnesota Wild. . . . It’s an entertaining and informative look at one of the NHL’s most-recent expansion franchises. . . . Lynn was an executive with the Wild; he now is an agent with Veritas Hockey.
——
If you’ve got a comment, some information you would like to pass along, or if you just want to say hello, feel free to contact me at greggdrinnan@gmail.com.
If you would like to donate to the cause, please visit the bottom of this post and go right ahead.
———

JUST NOTES:

D Cam Reagan, 19, who was released by the Prince Albert Raiders on Monday has signed to play with his hometown AJHL team, the Sherwood Park Crusaders. . . . He had two assists in 18 games with the Raiders. In 117 regular-season WHL games, 99 of those with the Kamloops Blazers, he put up 10 assists. . . . 
The AJHL’s Sherwood Park Crusaders have acquired the rights to F Jesse Zaharichuk, 19, from the Drumheller Dragons for future considerations. Zaharichuk, who is from Sherwood Park, had 17 points, including eight goals, in 17 games with the Lethbridge Hurricanes. He was assigned to Drumheller early in November, but he hadn’t yet played there. . . .
The AJHL’s Brooks Bandits have signed D Kord Pankewicz, 20, who was placed on waivers by the WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes earlier this week. He had a goal and eight assists in 24 games with Lethbridge this season. Pankewicz is from Drayton Valley, Alta. . . .
The Portland Winterhawks have dropped F Ty Kolle, 16, from their roster and he is returning to the Prince George-based Cariboo Cougars of the B.C. Major Midget Hockey League. Kolle had three assists in 13 games with Portland. From Kamloops, he was a fourth-round pick by Portland in the 2015 WHL bantam draft.
———


———

THURSDAY’S GAMES:

No Games Scheduled.
——

FRIDAY’S GAMES (all times local):

Saskatoon at Edmonton, 7 p.m.
Medicine Hat at Everett, 7:35 p.m.
Red Deer at Lethbridge, 7 p.m. (TBG)
Moose Jaw at Prince Albert, 7 p.m.
Victoria at Prince George, 7 p.m.
Kootenay vs. Seattle, at Kent, Wash., 7:35 p.m.
Kelowna at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Calgary at Swift Current, 7 p.m. (TBG)
Portland vs. Tri-City, at Kennewick, Wash., 7:05 p.m.
Brandon vs. Vancouver, at Langley, B.C., 7:30 p.m.
TBG: Teddy Bear Game.

There has never been a subscription fee for this blog, but if you enjoy stopping by here, why not consider donating to the cause? Just click HERE. . . and thank you very much.
PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Author takes readers on Wild ride

THE BOOK REVIEW:

You could say that Tom Lynn began his career in hockey management as a lawyer with the Manhattan firm of Proskauer Rose LLP, which has done a lot of work for the NHL.
That led him into the front office of the expansion Minnesota Wild in April 2000. Between then and the end of the 2008-09 season, his business cards carried such titles as assistant general manager, assistant GM/hockey operations, director of hockey administration and hockey affairs, and acting general manager.
Somehow he found time to write How to Bake an NHL Franchise from Scratch, a book that is subtitled The First Era of the Minnesota Wild.
Firstly, let’s deal with the bad news.
Lynn wrote this 465-page book over an 18-month period, doing it in fits and starts while on airplanes, in airports, in hotels, etc. He wrote it by himself and, admittedly, he isn’t a writer.
Unfortunately, it would appear that he didn’t have an editor, either. The book was published by Starry Night Publishing, a player in the self-publishing industry. A good editor would have pared this book down to about 350 pages by taking out a lot of the repetition. A good editor would have cleaned up a lot of the errant punctuation and spelling mistakes.
For example, goaltender David LeNeveu appears as Leneveu and Le Neveau within the space of two lines. There are other examples, too, such as Dave Tippet (it should be Tippett) and Peter Horacek (it should be Horachek). A good editor also would have discouraged Lynn from his habit of using nicknames throughout, often times referring to Wild GM Doug Risebrough as Riser, forward Andrew Brunette as Bruno and on and on.
Now . . . let’s move on to the good news, and there is far more of that than the other.
In fact, this book should become required reading for anyone interested in the business side of an NHL franchise or in the intricacies involved in putting together a franchise, from the front office to the roster.
Lynn was there from the start and he passes along a whole lot of inside information and anecdotes, covering such things as the building of a new arena, an NHL expansion draft, preparations for the annual NHL entry draft, dealing with player agents, negotiating contracts et al.
Risebrough had his fingers in every aspect of the Wild, including the building of the arena in which it would play. At one point, Risebrough has the architects make the home team’s dressing room smaller than originally designed and the visitor’s room larger. It was done in the interests of camaraderie — Risebrough didn’t want his guys too spread out, while he wanted visiting players to have as much space as possible.
When Risebrough started to move the Wild franchise forward, he had a five-year plan that was predicated on building through the entry draft. It’s interesting how Risebrough worked to make sure the Wild didn’t get ahead of itself and finish too high in the standings, thus moving it down in the entry draft order. It isn’t that the Wild threw games or anything like that; it’s just that Risebrough, who in fairness often was impeded by one of the NHL’s smaller budgets, wasn’t about to sign any free agents who might throw the plan out of whack.
When it came to putting a team together, the first thing the Wild — and the Columbus Blue Jackets, who came into the NHL at the same time — had to deal with was the expansion draft. Risebrough was adamant that he wasn’t going to take on a lot of over-priced contracts that belonged to fringe players. Lynn does a masterful job of detailing how the Wild prepared for this draft and how Bill Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner, came up with a rule in the middle of the draft that was aimed at getting the two teams to take on more of the contracts with which they wanted nothing to do.
Lynn also provides great insight into how Doug MacLean, then the Blue Jackets’ general manager, was reluctant to work in tandem with Risebrough going into the expansion draft.
Lynn also takes the reader inside the organization as Jacques Lemaire’s run as the Wild’s head coach comes to an end. It is especially interesting that Risebrough was poised to fire Lemaire during the 2008-09 season, only to get gun shy and let the coach finish the season.
I could go on and on, as Lynn really does shine a light into every corner of the operation. Suffice it to say, a hockey fan can’t go wrong with this book, which is available through amazon.com, either in hard copy or Kindle.
One person who doesn’t get a lot of mention is Lynn’s wife, Leslie. As you read through this book, you will be amazed at what all Lynn had on his plate, all of which resulted in long hours at the office and a lot of time on the road. He and Leslie have six children; she must be a wonderful wife and mother.
—-
Managing the Wild’s AHL affiliate, the Houston Aeros, also fell under Lynn’s job description. As a result, he was responsible for the hiring of Kevin Constantine as head coach. WHL fans will find some insight into Constantine in the four-plus pages dedicated to that signing.
—-
The Wild went through an ownership change after the 2008-09 season. Risebrough was gone and, eventually, so was Lynn. He now is a certified player agent and a principal of Veritas Hockey.

There has never been a subscription fee for this blog, but if you enjoy stopping by here, why not consider donating to the cause? Just click HERE. . . and thank you very much.
PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Raiders win third in row . . . Hitmen get split with Rebels . . . Ice hands Warriors a line in third period








F Jakub Klepiš (Portland, 2001-02) has signed a contract for the rest of the season with Třinec (Czech Republic, Extraliga). He was released by Färjestad Karlstad (Sweden, SHL) on Thursday by mutual agreement. This season, he had six goals and five assists in 21 games with Färjestad.
---



F Nikita Scherbak of the Everett Silvertips was fitted for a neck brace and taken from the ice on a stretcher during the second period of a 3-2 shootout victory over the host Seattle Thunderbirds on Saturday night. . . . Scherback was released from hospital later Saturday but was on crutches at the time. . . . Nick Patterson of the Everett Herald has an update right here.
---
Tom Lynn is a former sports writer who now is an agent with Veritas Hockey. In between, he spent nine seasons in the front office of the Minnesota Wild, starting when it was an NHL expansion franchise. Now he has written a book -- How to Bake an NHL Franchise From Scratch, the First Era of the Minnesota Wild. . . . Michael Russo of the Minneapolis StarTribune has a piece right here on what promises to be a good read.
---

SUNDAY’S GAMES:

In Lethbridge, the Prince Albert Raiders scored the game’s last three goals and beat the Hurricanes, 5-3. . . . Hurricanes F Jamal Watson, who also had two assists, gave his side a 3-2 lead with his 10th goal at 6:05 of the third period. . . . Raiders F Gage Quinney tied it, with his second of the game and third of the season, just 19 seconds later. . . . D Josh Morrissey of the Raiders scored his sixth goal, breaking the 3-3 tie at 14:46. . . . F Reid Gardiner, who had a goal and two assists, added insurance with his 13th goal at 18:51. He’s got six goals and three assists over his last four games. . . . Morrissey also had two assists. . . . Raiders G Rylan Parenteau stopped 32 shots. . . . The Hurricanes (5-15-4) have lost nine straight games (0-6-3). . . . The Raiders (11-13-0) are on a three-game winning streak. . . .

In Calgary, the Hitmen scored the game’s last five goals and beat the Red Deer Rebels, 6-2. . . . F Kenton Helgesen tied the score 2-2 at 10:59 of the second period and then broke the tie at 13:30. Helgesen, who also had an assist, has seven goals this season. . . . F Adam Tambellini, F Jake Virtanen and D Travis Sanheim each had a goal and two assists for Calgary (13-9-3), which moved into a tie with Red Deer for second place in the Central Division. . . . The line of Helgesen, Tambellini and Virtanen combined for nine points. . . . F Tyler Sandhu had a goal and an assist for Red Deer. . . . The Hitmen lost F Chase Lang to a cross-checking major and game misconduct at 2:36 of the second period. . . . The Rebels (13-10-3) had won two in a row, including a 4-0 victory over the visiting Hitmen on Saturday. . . .

In Cranbrook, the Kootenay Ice struck for six third-period goals as it beat the Moose Jaw Warriors, 7-3. . . . The Warriors took a 3-1 lead into the third period, but the Ice tied it on goals by F Luke Philp, his 10th, on a PP, at 3:39 and F Levi Cable at 4:02. . . . Cable then gave the Ice lead, with his ninth goal, at 9:22. . . . Ice F Jon Martin, who was playing in his 200th regular-season game, had a goal, his third, and three assists in the third period as he tied a franchise record for most points in a period. . . . Cable now has at least one goal in three straight games. . . . Ice F Sam Reinhart had three assists as he ran his point streak to eight games. He's got 19 points, 15 of them assists, in that span. . . . F Jaedon Descheneau added two goals, giving him 14, and an assist for the Ice. He’s got goals in four straight. . . . The Ice also got a goal and two assists from Matt Alfaro, who has four goals. . . . The line of Alfaro, Cable and Martin had 10 points in the third period. . . . F Jesse Shynkaruk had a goal, his third, and an assist, while F Brayden Point had two assists for the Warriors (10-12-3). . . . G Brody Wilms made his first career start for Moose Jaw, stopping 33 shots, 26 of them through two periods. . . . The Ice (11-14-0) has won three in a row and eight of nine. . . . The Warriors were without D Tyler Brown. According to Matthew Gourlie of the Moose Jaw Times-Herald, Brown tweeted after a 5-1 victory in Lethbridge on Saturday that he had suffered a broken hand. . . . Taylor Rocca of the Cranbrook Daily Townsman has a game story right here. . . .

In Spokane, F Kailer Yamamoto scored 14 seconds into OT to give the Chiefs a 2-1 victory over the Kamloops Blazers. . . . Yamamoto has six goals this season. . . . The Chiefs took a 1-0 lead at 13:59 of the second period when F Liam Stewart scored his 10th goal. . . . The Blazers tied it when F Cole Ully got his 12th at 18:19 of the second. . . . Kamloops G Connor Ingram, making his fourth straight start, stopped 39 shots. . . . Spokane G Garret Hughson made 18 saves. . . . The Chiefs were 0-for-6 on the PP; the Blazers’ PP unit never got on the ice. . . . The game was delayed for about 15 minutes in the third period as the arena staff replaced a pane of glass. It was broken when Spokane D Evan Fiala checked Kamloops F Jermaine Loewen into it. . . . The Chiefs (12-7-3) have won three in a row. They won three games in as many nights over the weekend, each by a 2-1 count. . . . The Blazers (11-10-5) have points in four straight (2-0-2).
---



  © Design byThirteen Letter

Back to TOP