The Globe and Mail live blogs the NHL draft

Link to story

Hoops dream at arm's lengthCIS rookie making an impact with unique prosthetic limb, JAMES MIRTLE writes

Link to story

Sweden's attitude improved this yearTeam hasn't won a medal in 10 years, but after beating Czechs, there's a buzz

Link to story

Wheat King on mission since Canada cut: Fehr dominates playoffs

Here's a pdf copy (600k) of the story I wrote last week on Brandon Wheat Kings sniper Eric Fehr.

Enforcer keeps his gloves on in Sweden: 'I just didn't want to fight': Sabres' Peters works on finesse, but still finds penalty trouble

Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Page: S5, Section: Sports
Byline: James Mirtle
Source: National Post

When it comes to plotting the IQs of NHL players, one is tempted to place hockey's lumbering enforcers towards the low end of the curve. After all, punches to the head can hardly be beneficial to brain cells.

But if you need an example of a brain-dead punching machine, don't look to the Buffalo Sabres' Andrew Peters. In addition to being good with his fists, this lad can think.

And when Peters saw a lengthy lockout coming down the pipe this summer, he planned ahead. Rather than return to the slugfest of the American Hockey League, he signed with a Tier-2 club in Sweden.

The 6-foot-4, 250-pound Peters, a player who once racked up 388 penalty minutes in an AHL season, was going to a league without fighting.

And, thus, this enforcer's odyssey began.

Peters is playing for Bodens IK in Sweden's Allsvenskan North league with a handful of other NHLers. So far, he has played 17 games, scored two goals and picked up two assists. He has also spent more than 130 minutes in the penalty box.

But it is not his fault.

"You know when I first got here, they were really hard on me," Peters said from his home in the small northern city of Boden. "The rink is a lot bigger and the guys a lot smaller. You go out of your way to finish a check and they get you for charging, boarding, headchecking -- I don't know what the hell headchecking is, but I got a headchecking penalty.

"Then you kind of lose your cool, say something to the ref and you get a 10-minute penalty and a game misconduct. [My penalties] are mostly from blabbing back to the ref after he makes a bad call.

"They were definitely watching me."

And how could they not? The Allsvenskan North has big players, but none who match up to the 24-year-old behemoth from St. Catharines, Ont. So Peters, who came to Sweden to develop the finesse aspects of his game, spent a lot of time in a familiar place.

"He sat in the penalty box all the time," said Bodens IK's head coach, Kari Jaako.

Peters had more than 101 penalty minutes in his first nine games, including 37 in the first game he played. The Swedish media pounced on the team's new novelty act.

"They were all over me when I first got here, as far as the penalties and everything," said Peters.

Like many other players who went to Europe during the lockout, Peters had a difficult time adjusting to a radically different culture and brand of hockey. And, when he suffered a serious abdominal injury in December, Peters packed his bags and went home.

Despite the tumultuous tenure of his first few games, the team invited Peters to return to Boden in the new year. Two weeks ago, he arrived a changed player.

"I think this time he's in much better form," said Jaako. "He's lost about 12 pounds. He's a big guy -- he was almost too big for Swedish hockey I think.

"Now he's helping a lot. Last game [a 4-1 win over Pitea], he scored the winning goal. He was very good. I think he's coming along all the time."

Peters feels coming to Sweden was the right decision.

"With the lockout, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to play with very skilled players and work on, you know, skills. I've definitely learned a lot, and I think my game's developed over here.

"I just didn't want to fight. I've already proven to myself, proven to people that I can fight, so it's nice to actually improve my game."

Does that mean fans can expect him on a scoring line when the NHL resumes play?

"No. I'm just trying to become a more complete player. I don't think that my role as an enforcer will ever change. There's a lot more glory in scoring goals, I'll tell you, but like I said, you've got to do what gets you there, and you do what you can to stay there.

"Maybe if I'm lucky one day I can end up like Tie Domi and score 12 to 15 goals a year. That's what I'm trying to aim for is to be an impact guy like him."

With Bodens, Peters plays 20 minutes a game on the second line and the power play, a stark contrast from the four minutes a game he saw in the NHL last year. Fighting is his role, but Peters doesn't glorify it.

"I don't know that anyone in the world enjoys getting punched in the face."

Peters may be an enforcer, but he's no dummy. If his odyssey pays off, however, he just might be a Domi.

Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: Dave Sandford, Getty Images / Andrew Peters knows he's a tough guy, but he also wants to contribute a few goals like Toronto's Tie Domi.

Goalie's career saved by a glove: Has 'circus-freak appeal'

Thursday, February 10, 2005
Page: A3 , Section: News
Byline: James Mirtle
Source: National Post

Dan Blackburn was used to being an acrobat, but it might take a little while to adjust to being a carnival act.

Mr. Blackburn joined the minor-league Victoria Salmon Kings last week, and as the only goaltender to play wearing two blockers, he has attracted a lot of attention in the British Columbia capital.

"This sounds kind of strange, but it's almost like circus-freak appeal, you know, 'Come and see the goalie with two blockers,' " Mr. Blackburn said. "I feel a little on display like that. But I think there's just been a lot of interest to see what the talk is about."

The source of the fuss is a new blocker-catcher hybrid glove Mr. Blackburn now wears in place of a typical trapper. An injury to his left shoulder prevents the 21-year-old netminder from rotating his glove hand into an upright catching position, meaning a traditional glove is of little use. The goaltender's limitations prompted some creative retooling by New York Rangers training staff, who developed the hybrid glove, and the NHL subsequently approved its use due to Mr. Blackburn's disability.

And when Mr. Blackburn began practising with the Salmon Kings last week, the unique piece of equipment generated a lot of curiosity. Tickets for the Salmon Kings past three ECHL games were snapped up and dozens of media outlets clamoured to talk to the former NHL wunderkind.

"It's been crazy, all the media requests," Mr. Blackburn said. "There have been newspapers, radio stations and TV stations. I've been interviewed on Sportsnet a couple of times."

Not that Mr. Blackburn isn't used to the spotlight.

When the Camrose, Alta., native arrived in the NHL three years ago as an 18-year-old, he became the third-youngest netminder to win a game. And after playing 63 games over two seasons, the former 10th overall pick (2001) was touted as the long-term solution for the struggling Rangers.

Then a freak injury derailed Mr. Blackburn's career.

The goalie pinched a nerve in his shoulder while lifting weights in the summer of 2003. The injury was serious enough that he missed all of the following NHL season. Then, while rehabilitating for a comeback last August, he aggravated the injury, separating the shoulder and causing irreparable damage to the nerve.

After numerous unsuccessful surgeries and nearly two years, Mr. Blackburn was told he may never regain full use of his arm.

It was with that thought still sinking in that he suited up in a game with Victoria on Friday night.

"It was exciting," he said. "After not being on the ice for such a long time, you almost feel like it's not really going on. It takes a couple of games of where you're out there and you're in a game again."

The road back to pro hockey has been a difficult one for Mr. Blackburn, who at one point went more than year without stepping on to the ice.

"[It was] a lot of long hours at the gym, long hours on the ice by myself in New York, just working on getting my movement better, improving myself so I could be as prepared as possible when I came back."

After being away from the game for so long, Mr. Blackburn also began to feel isolated from his team. He still attended Rangers' home games last year but stopped going on the road trips.

As Mr. Blackburn is the first modern goaltender to play wearing two blockers, people are tentative in saying how he will fare playing with the injury long-term.

"He's got a disability, and he's going to see where he can go now [with the injury]," his agent, Mark Hall, said prior to watching Mr. Blackburn play last week.

"As they say, the proof is in the pudding."

The pudding, it seems, is just fine. Victoria lost 3-2 in Mr. Blackburn's debut -- a loss that added another notch to the team's league-record 20-game winless skid -- but he was in goal the following night when the team snapped the cumbersome streak. Mr. Blackburn made a few highlight-reel saves in a 5-4 shootout victory.

The Salmon Kings can certainly use the help. Victoria is in last place with a 8-32-5 record and has allowed more than four goals a game. In three games so far, Mr. Blackburn has stopped the bleeding a little, letting 10 pucks past and posting a save percentage of .899.

The one-time phenom says playing with two blockers has forced him to adapt how he plays goal.

"The way I used to play is I used to basically just perform based on athleticism. I never really had a goalie coach growing up, so I wasn't a positional goalie. It was just all athleticism and reaction.

"Now I'm trying to play a positional game so I don't have to reach for the puck like I used to."

But it's not just a change in style that has come over the young netminder. Mr. Blackburn says his attitude toward playing the game has also changed.

"You do realize that there's a lot more to life than hockey, when it has been your life and it's not there anymore. You definitely have a different outlook on everything. I always thought I wanted to make hockey a part of it again, and that's what I'm trying to do now.

"I'm a hockey player first off, and it's just natural [to want to play]. It'd be a different story, you know, if I was doing something else."

Illustration:
• Photo: Ch Tv / Former NHLer Dan Blackburn permanently injured his shoulder and now wears a hybrid glove. "I feel a little on display like that."

Coaches warm to idea of open ice: 'What's best for ... hockey'

Thursday, January 27, 2005
Page: S3, Section: Sports
Byline: James Mirtle, with files from Ed Willes, The Province
Source: National Post, with files from The Province

TORONTO - While one meeting was held under the veil of secrecy yesterday, another took place at the NHL's Toronto offices, and it had little to do with collective bargaining and cost certainty. Six of the league longest-tenured coaches met with NHL officials with the goal of improving the quality of hockey played on the ice--whenever it should resume.

To do so, the bench bosses in attendance took collective aim at a familiar foe: Obstruction.

"Everyone wants the same thing," said Vancouver head coach Mark Crawford. "I mean no one is against opening up the game and everyone wants to see that stars perform. The question is, how do you get there?"

The answer, said meeting chair and NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell, is to communicate the rules directly to players, officials and coaches. According to Campbell, the session was a step towards that goal.

"When you're talking to managers and coaches about the game while games are being played, they're just interested in how things best help their teams win," said Campbell.

"Now we're apart from the competitive, day-to-day battles, [and] we can discuss what's best for the game of hockey and what's going to open it up and make it more exciting. We also understand that when we come back ... we have to give something back to the fans. We talked about that a lot."

Yesterday's meeting is the latest in a series of attempts by the NHL to increase the game's flow. Previous initiatives to call more hooking, holding and interference penalties have met with limited success.

Reducing obstruction was also one of 10 recommendations made by a panel of hockey insiders at a recent summit organized by Detroit's Brendan Shanahan.

The NHL's clutch-and-grab mentality is often attributed to how defensive coaching has become. It was perhaps not a coincidence, then, that several of the coaches in attendance are notable for employing a defensive style of play.

Aside from Crawford, whose free-skating Canucks buck the trapping trend, the other coaches at the meeting were Florida's Jacques Martin, Philadelphia's Ken Hitchcock, Detroit's Dave Lewis, Colorado's Joel Quenneville and Buffalo's Lindy Ruff.

Despite the fact that an obstruction crackdown could hinder their individual teams, the coaches said they were united in making hockey a more entertaining product.

"One of the areas we talked about was rewarding the speed and skill of the players," said Lewis. "We wanted to enhance the vision of everyone on what obstruction is, when it's allowed and when it's not."

"Coaches look to improve their team and not necessarily the product," added Crawford. "With the break here, and with the pressure off, we can look at ways of speeding up the game and making it more open."

With the NHL having not played a game in months and labour negotiations dragging into late January, it may be a while before the ideas generated yesterday are implemented. And while he steadfastly refused to discuss CBA matters, Campbell said the lockout had been beneficial to the process.

"At the end, everyone wants to get back to the on-ice problems. If there is some silver lining with the lockout, it's that we have time now to do that."

'They always leave smiling': Canada's pluckiest hockey team has scored 22 goals, given up 369 and never won a game. But they keep trying

Monday, January 31, 2005
Page: A3 , Section: News
Byline: James Mirtle
Source: National Post

THORNHILL - Chalk in hand, Toronto Aces coach Bill Burton was mapping out a play on the dressing-room wall for his team of eight- and nine-year-old boys.

"OK, so who picks the puck up here?" Mr. Burton asked as he pointed to an X marked behind an imaginary net.

"The winger ... no, the centre," replied a chorus of voices.

"The winger," said the coach. "He brings the puck to the other side. And if the other guy gets it, it doesn't matter how big he is, hit him. Don't skate away from the puck."

It sounded like typical advice from a minor-hockey coach, but for the Aces, nothing this season has been typical. They are a new team in the Greater Toronto Hockey League's (GTHL) Minor Atom A division and, as with most expansion franchises, the first year has been a trying one.

The team has played 30 games and lost them all.

"When we joined the team, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle," said Troy Ellenor, whose son, Brendan, skates for the Aces. "But the way I looked at it -- and what I told him -- is that it would be a learning experience."

That it has been. The Aces struggled to put together a lineup to start the season, scrambling to find house-league players to fill their roster. Even now, the team has only 13 players -- two fewer than league requirements -- and only a handful have played outside of house-league hockey before.

The Aces dropped their second game of the season 21-0, and the losses have continued to pile up. They have scored 22 goals and surrendered 369, or more than 12 a game.

The results have not come from a lack of effort, and the parents say their children's play has improved immensely.

"We don't dwell on the losing at all," Mary Slavik-Peters said. "And they have been getting better, playing better as a team."

"When Brendan started, he was a little bit wobbly [on his skates]," Mr. Ellenor said. "Now he's doing really well out there. He would never want to go back to house league again."

Yesterday, the Aces played the Markham Islanders, a team they lost to by one goal two weeks earlier, and a team with many players who stand a head taller than most of the Aces.

The Aces took to the ice at the Thornhill Community Arena to the sound of cheers from their parents, and while the Islanders scored immediately after the opening faceoff, the cheering seldom waned.

The puck, though, rarely left the Aces' end. Aces goalie Quintin Davis, with the top of his helmet not quite reaching the crossbar, kept his team in the game by pouncing on pucks like a smaller Dominik Hasek.

Kelly Casey, Quintin's mother and the Aces manager, was quick to point out the positives of the routine peppering her son faces. "He's getting 40 to 50 shots every game," she said, just as the Islanders slid another goal into the Aces' net as part of an 11-0 rout. "Last year, he only got five to 10, so he has gained in shot exposure and it has made him a better goalie.

"We don't have that emphasis [on winning]. Sometimes the kids get down on themselves, but they always leave the arena smiling. And it doesn't matter what the score is, they always play hard."

In his 10 years of coaching minor hockey, Mr. Burton has helmed more than a few struggling teams. The Aces are different, he said, because of the effort they put in on the ice.

"Morale is very good. They have all been playing hard and look much better out there [than in the beginning]," he said. "You know, we lost 14-1 [on Saturday], but they played with a lot of heart.

"I'm very proud of them, even though we lost."

The GTHL wanted to fold the Aces over the Christmas break due to their lack of players, but Mr. Burton fought to keep the team afloat.

"I didn't want them to be without a team," he said. So the team kept playing, and the parents and players rallied around. Even without the wins, it is their team. And, if nothing else, the Aces are a shining example of winning not being everything.

"He still wakes up every weekend and says, 'When am I playing hockey today?' " Holly Harrocks said of her son, Ian. "We were worried we wouldn't even have a team. That's really one thing I'm glad for -- we still have our team."

Hard times fall on B.C. boomtown of hockey success: Kamloops Blazers: Interior city no longer the envy of junior teams across the country

Monday, January 24, 2005
Page: S8, Section: Sports
Byline: James Mirtle
Source: National Post

Three hundred kilometres northeast of Vancouver, up the well-trod Trans-Canada highway and into the Interior, you'll find Kamloops, B.C., a city where a hockey team became as much a part of the geography as the arid hills and rushing Thompson Rivers.

The Kamloops Blazers won the Memorial Cup three of four years in the 1990s (1992, '93 and '95), while producing an impressive group of future NHL players (Jarome Iginla, Mark Recchi, Scott Niedermayer, Darcy Tucker, Darryl Sydor, Shane Doan) and future NHL coaches (Ken Hitchcock, Tom Renney and Don Hay).

A blue collar city of 80,000, Kamloops was the envy of junior hockey for nearly two decades, when it was known as "Little Montreal" for its prowess. These days, the comparisons to junior hockey's elite are few. The team has suffered through a front-office scandal, poor on-ice performances and a revolving door of management and coaches. The dynasty's walls, long since worn, are crumbling.

This season the Blazers have a record of 17-23-3-2, placing them last in their division and three points out of the playoffs. It is unfamiliar territory for a franchise that has not missed the post-season in its 24-year history.

"We're right in the hunt of it," Blazers general manager Dean Clark said, one day removed from a pair of lopsided losses to the Calgary Hitmen and Red Deer Rebels. "Obviously we're trying to make the playoffs. That's the goal every year. We're definitely a young club, and it's going to be a tough climb to get there."

The team got even younger recently when Clark dealt two disgruntled veterans, captain Jarret Lukin and Cam Cunning, after both requested trades. The moves prompted suggestions the club was rebuilding--a course it has been said Kamloops fans would never accept.

"We had gotten pretty full of ourselves to the point where we thought we'd always win," said Clark. "But we've lost in the first round five years in a row now, and it's time to do something different. We did a lot of winning over the past 20 years, and teams are all getting their shots in now."

Clark and Blazers head coach Mark Ferner played together for Kamloops in the early 80's, beginning when the team was owned by the Edmonton Oilers. Members of the community purchased the club in 1984, the same year a young Hitchcock arrived and coached the team to a 52-17-2 record.

In the years following, the Blazers continually avoided junior hockey's cyclical nature, spoiling their fans with one impressive season after another. In 14 years prior to the 1996-97 season, the club had eight 50-win seasons and fell below the 40-win mark only once.

Recent years have not been as kind. Colin Day, the team's president since 1982, resigned in the fall of 2003 after a front-office embezzlement scandal. On the ice, the Blazers have eclipsed 40 wins just once in the last eight seasons. The team even retired Taking Care of Business, the longtime Blazer anthem for home goals.

And now, with the franchise on the brink of a first-ever playoff miss, the pressure is on a young team with only four players over 18.

"The pressure [to make the playoffs] just has to be to a point," said Ferner, who played 94 NHL games during a motley 16-year pro career. "Worrying about making the playoffs is one thing, but going in and competing is another. We're worried about what the score was before the game has started."

"We have high standards," said Clark. "Mark and I both played for this team, so if anyone knows [about the pressure], we know.

"I don't think anybody in [the dressing room] doesn't know we have never missed the playoffs. They know."

Blazers goaltender Devan Dubnyk, an Oilers first-round pick in the 2004 entry draft, said the team is anxious not to be remembered as the one that put former glories to rest.

"There's absolutely no way that we're going to be that team," said Dubnyk. "I'm prepared to play every single game as hard as I can to make sure of that.

"Kamloops is an unbelievable city to play junior hockey in, and it does add pressure. The fans are very supportive and involved, and people just really want us to win."

Even without the wins, Clark says the team is determined to bring pride to the rink with another Blazer staple: hard work.

"One of the things we are bringing back is the culture. We're slowly chipping away to become a team that is going to work hard, like those old Blazer teams were known for."

And while fans in Kamloops appreciate the effort, reminders of days gone by are never far. They need only to catch a glimpse of the rafters to see dozens of championship banners.