McDavid for real

The Edmonton Oilers gather at their bench during a break on Saturday.

    Jim Harrison’s Edmonton Oilers record for points in a game might be jeopardy one day, if Connor McDavid has anything to say about it.

    Way back on Jan. 30, 1973, Harrison notched 10 points for the Oilers in one game during their inaugural season of professional hockey in the World Hockey Association with three goals and seven assists, when club was still known as the Alberta Oilers. The Oiler thumped the New York Raiders that night 11-3.

    For those that saw McDavid play during Saturday’s NHL exhibition game at the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon, one could see him possibly matching or breaking that record during one extremely hot performance. He could easily match the Oilers NHL record for points in a game at eight, which has occurred four times in team history with the last coming from Sam Gagner on Feb. 2, 2012.

    The 18-year-old centre only had one assist during the Oilers 3-0 victory over the Minnesota Wild, but he was the best player on the ice. During his whole hockey career to this point, the Newmarket, Ont., product has been labeled a phenom. The label fits.

    McDavid is one of three players in the history of the Ontario Hockey League to be granted Exceptional Player status, which allowed him to play a full season in the major junior ranks at age 15. Normally, a player has to be age 16 to play a full campaign at the major junior level.

    Last season, McDavid, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 195 pounds, piled up 44 goals and 76 assists in 47 regular season games with the Erie Otters. He went on to net 21 goals and 28 assists in 20 post-season contests.

    When he wasn’t in the OHL, McDavid was a hero helping Canada win gold at the world junior hockey championships back in January posting three goals and eight assists in seven games.

    The 7,541 spectators that saw McDavid play on Saturday will have to admit they saw something special that night. He could have easily had six or seven points in that contest.

    Playing on a line with Leon Draisaitl and Anton Slepyshev, McDavid made a number of beauty passing plays to create scoring chances. When he passed the puck, it seemed to have eyes.

    On one play in the first working in tight on the Minnesota goal, McDavid made a blind backwards pass that landed on the tape of Slepyshev’s stick. The Russian had an open net to shoot at, but looked surprised for a second his linemate made such a play. Slepyshev failed to score.

    The pair had a two-on-one chance a few minutes later, but Slepyshev fanned on shooting a perfectly placed set-up pass from McDavid.

    Besides his playmaking, McDavid also created a pair of breakaways. Early in the second, McDavid had his first breakaway, but he was turned away by Wild goaltender Darcy Kuemper. In the third, McDavid stole the puck from a Wild defender at the Minnesota blue-line to create his second breakaway, but he fired a shot just wide of the goal.

    As far as playing style goes, McDavid resembles Wayne Gretzky, but that doesn’t mean the young prodigy will become as great as “The Great One.”

    Gretzky is the top hockey icon in Canada, whose gift for the game of hockey allowed the Oilers to win four Stanley Cups in the 1980s. He also stood out on the international stage helping Canada win Canada Cup titles in 1984, 1987 and 1991.

    After his playing days wrapped up, Gretzky put together Canada’s gold medal winning team at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, and his post-game media tirade following 3-3 draw with the Czech Republic to close the preliminary round help rally a country to the Canadian flag to power the playoff round push.

    To say McDavid might one day become an all-time hockey great like Gretzky or Mario Lemieux might be too much to ask. If McDavid has a career that is similar to Bryan Trottier, Dale Hawerchuk, Teemu Selanne or Jarome Iginla, that might be a more realistic expectation.

    McDavid was the first overall selection in June’s NHL Entry Draft, and the draft’s history is loaded with first overall busts as well as stars.

    As the years move on, McDavid has to continue to work on his physical conditioning. Most NHLers are well built men, and 18-year-olds tend to have the bodies of high school graduates, which is often something that can’t be circumvented due to the natural development of the human body.

    In the old days of hockey when players didn’t train year round, it was easier for an 18-year-old to break into the NHL and have a huge immediate impact.

    McDavid needs to keep up with his physical training and avoid major injuries, if he is to have a Hall of Fame type career. As the saying goes, “Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard.”

    When talent does work hard, you get players like basketball legend Michael Jordan, football great Warren Moon, Iginla and Gretzky.

    McDavid’s career must be allowed to play out for what it is. If he does realize his potential, Harrison’s long standing record may finally go up in smoke.

Other thoughts from Saskatoon’s NHL exhibition game

The Oilers and Wild set for a faceoff in the Minnesota zone.

    It is always hard judge how good an NHL exhibition tilt is, especially when don’t ice what would be a normal regular season roster.

    Under the guidance of new head coach Todd McLellan, the Oilers played with a lot more structure than they did when they visited Saskatoon in the 2014 pre-season, when they fell 5-0 to the Chicago Blackhawks. The habits the Oilers are focusing on new will help them when the regular season rolls around. Will they end their drought of not making the NHL playoffs that dates back to 2006, when they last made the Stanley Cup finals, that might still be a see it to believe it thing.

    As for other observations:

• The attendance figure of 7,541 has to be viewed as a disappointment, but not unexpected. Last year’s game drew 10,760 spectators, but since Toronto-based promoter John Graham started bringing NHL pre-season games to Saskatoon starting in 2009, locals saw their fair share of dud games. With ticket prices ranging from $59.50 to $112 including fees, ticket buyers likely did not want to suffer through watching a contest where usually half the players were not full-time NHLers from the previous season. The fact the Oilers confirmed McDavid would play the day before the contest didn’t provide enough time for some to possibly reconsider going.
• This year’s game overall was better than last year’s when the Blackhawks claimed victory over the Oilers. Was it good enough to warrant paying the high ticket prices, that is debatable, but ticket buyers were likely better off spending their money elsewhere. The Wild dressed a lot of non-NHLers, so they could ice more of a regular roster at home on Sunday, when they thrashed the Winnipeg Jets 8-1.
•  Don’t underestimate how big of a fan base the Oilers have in Saskatoon and area. Most of the crowd showed up wearing Oilers gear. You almost felt like you were in Edmonton.
• In recent years, the Oilers had a reputation for being not all that friendly media wise, when it came to accessing players for interviews. At last year’s NHL exhibition game, you had to pester team officials to get players you requested. Now under new general manager and president of hockey operations Peter Chiarelli and McLellan as head coach, the media area was flooded with all sorts of players for post-game interviews after this year’s contest. Access wasn’t a problem, and it seemed like everyone was up for answering questions. For those that wanted to talk to Russian product Slepyshev, whose English isn’t that strong, his countryman and Oilers teammate Nail Yakupov provided services as an interpreter.
• While the Oilers were the big attraction, there were strong cheers for Wild netminder Kuemper, who is from Saskatoon. He looked strong stopping 27 of 29 shots fired his way playing in front of a large contingent of family and friends.
• Oilers left-winger Luke Gazdic and Wild defenceman Marco Scandella had a spirited fight near the end of the third period shortly after the Oilers iced the contest with an empty-net goal.
• I worked Saturday’s game for The Canadian Press. If you want to see that story, you can do so on the TSN site by clicking right here.

    If you have any comments you want to pass along about this blog post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

Saskatoon NHL game needs McDavid

Last year’s pre-season Oilers tilt was pretty much a dud

Edmonton and Chicago met in an NHL pre-season game in Saskatoon last year.

    Connor McDavid needs play in Saskatoon to give Saturday’s NHL exhibition contest a chance to have bang for the buck.

    The Edmonton Oilers are slated to square off with the Minnesota Wild on Saturday at 4 p.m. at the SaskTel Centre,  and everyone wants to know will the 18-year-old phenom play or not? As of late Thursday, reports coming from the Edmonton media state no decision has been made if McDavid will suit up in Saskatoon, or Friday when the Oilers travel to Winnipeg to face the Jets. McDavid could play in both games.

    If McDavid doesn’t play on Saturday, spectators may be well advised to save their money and do something else.

    Almost a year ago on Sept. 28, 2014, the Oilers fell 5-0 to the Chicago Blackhawks in a lackluster pre-season tilt in Saskatoon. A crowd of 10,760 spectators saw both sides ice rosters where only half of their players spent time in the NHL in the 2013-14 campaign. With so many non-NHL players on the ice, it seemed like those in the building weren’t all that enthusiastic about what transpired.

    There was cheering, but there wasn’t as much cheering as you would expect. Spectators paid $59.50 to $112 per ticket including fees, but in all honesty, they basically threw their money away.

    Ticket prices for this year’s game in Saskatoon have the same price range. If this year’s contest mirrors last year’s, fans would be wise to spend their money elsewhere. You could take your significant other to a nice dinner at one of the many great eating establishments in downtown Saskatoon, or hit up Earls on 2^nd Avenue.

    If McDavid takes the ice to play on Saturday, the buzz will hit the point that the SaskTel Centre will be the place to be. He was a hero helping Canada win gold at the world junior hockey championships back in January posting three goals and eight assists in seven games.

    With the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters last season, McDavid, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 195 pounds, potted 44 goals and 76 assists in 47 games. The Newmarket, Ont., product had 21 goals and 28 assists in 20 post-season contests. The 18-year-old centre had a pair of assists in the Oilers 4-2 pre-season win over the Calgary Flames on Monday at Rexall Place in Edmonton.

    McDavid is viewed as a once in a generation talent, and that alone would make Saturday’s game compelling for the masses, if he plays.

    With that said, the game could still be dud, even if McDavid does play. Barring something unforeseen like a major injury, McDavid will be on the Oilers roster for their regular season opener, when they travel to St. Louis on Oct. 8 to take on Blues, so a sure thing player will only put so much effort into a game that doesn’t mean anything in the regular season standings or the playoffs.

    The Oilers brass said that McDavid will be in Saskatoon regardless if he plays or not on Saturday. Hopefully, he will be on the ice and not sitting in a luxury box.
    UPDATE - Oilers head coach Todd McLellan announced on Friday that McDavid will dress for his team's exhibition game on Saturday in Saskatoon. Saturday's game will be McDavid's second outing of the pre-season. 

Blades will bring it

The Blades celebrate a goal last season.

    For hockey fans that are looking for a more guaranteed exciting outing, they would be wise to check out the Saskatoon Blades home opener on Friday at 7 p.m. at the SaskTel Centre, when they take on their archrivals the Prince Albert Raiders.

    Last season, the Blades finished last in the entire WHL with a 19-49-2-2 mark, as they continued to rebuild from hosting the 2013 Memorial Cup and from the fact they also traded away picks and prospects to land Brayden Schenn for their 2011 post-season run, which ended in the second round.

    This will mark the third season the Blades will be under the ownership of Edmonton product Mike Priestner, and the hard work his staff has put in should yield some more tangible results in the 2015-16 campaign.

    Bob Woods, who is the team’s head coach and general manager, and Dean Brockman, who is the club’s assistant coach, are both entering their second season guiding “the Bridge City Bunch.” Under their guidance last season, the Blades’ work ethic was solid, and most of their setbacks were by a goal or two.

    That has to be deemed as impressive, because the roster often contained a number of players that shouldn’t have been in the WHL. The effort was there, but the skill was not.

    The Blades continued to retool in the off-season, and they believe their talent level is higher. They had pieces last year like goaltenders Nik Amundrud and Brock Hamm, as well as offensive-defenceman Brycen Martin. It will be interesting to see what Yorkton product Jake Kustra can do as a 16-year-old rookie after showing he could provide a spark last season playing seven games as a 15-year-old call up on the back end.

    Overager Nick Zajac and 18-year-old sophomore Wyatt Sloboshan should be a steady influence up front.

    Around the action on the ice, the Blades were strong at pulling off various promotions last season, and one should expect the same this season.

    While construction leading to the SaskTel Centre could provide a hassle, Friday’s opener has the makings of being a crowd pleaser.

    If you have any comments about this blog post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

May God forever bless “The Boogeyman”

            It is a book I don’t wanted to glance into, but I do anyways.

            A Christmas gift, I am nowhere near finishing it. I jump to a page or two here and a page or two there depending upon where curiousity takes me at that point in time.

            The book is written by John Branch and it is about the life of late NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard entitled, “Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard.” Anyone that follows hockey knows that the book penned by the New York Times writer will enter tough areas.

Boogaard died on May 13, 2011 at age 28 from an accidental overdose of alcohol and painkillers. The painkillers were used to treat his concussion injuries.

            Boogaard played in the WHL during the years I covered the league. He was with the Medicine Hat Tigers, when I was in Prince Albert, and I arrived in the Gas City shortly after his time with the Tigers came to an end.

            I was on shift at the Medicine Hat News the night Boogaard passed. Locally, the word arrived in the newsroom at the 9 p.m. hour.

            My first reaction was shock.

            I asked my co-worker, Scott Schmidt, if Boogaard had really died. He did some checking on various Internet lines and quickly confirmed that Boogaard, who played mostly in the NHL with the Minnesota Wild and finished with the New York Rangers, had passed.

            My next reaction was I could name 10 people in town off the top of my head that would immediately be sad about the news. As deadline was approaching and I was handling layout in sports, I quickly pieced together an obituary with quotes from old stories I had written on “The Boogeyman.”

            When my shift ended, I became sad. I was sad, because I knew how well Boogaard was loved in Medicine Hat.

Knowing this love, I have mixed emotions, when it comes to checking out Branch’s book. I am hesitant to discover the struggles Boogaard had in the later years of his life.

When I am ready and the curiosity is up, I do check the book out.

In Medicine Hat, Boogaard was seen as the life of the party comedian and everyone’s best friend. He kept in touch big time with his old billet mom, Doris Sullivan, and Tigers assistant trainer, Ken Stickel, and sent them a variety of his NHL gear.

            He was far from the 6-foot-7, 258-pound, monster type guy spectators saw engaging in brawls on the ice. Looking back to how some of his on-ice fighting incidents were covered in the WHL, I believe at the time we in the media painted a way more aggressive picture of the man, which did him a disservice. Hindsight is always 20-20.

            I only got to deal with Boogaard on a couple of occasions. I wish there would have been more.

            The highlight was writing a catch-up feature on him shortly before Christmas of 2006. I phoned his mother, Joanne, for a cell number.

There was kind of amusement and a bit of an unsure moment, because a reporter from Medicine Hat wanted to talk to Derek. I could tell mom was a bit concerned about what Derek was going to say in the interview.

She passed on the cell number and said, “Please be good.”

I left a message on Derek’s phone, and he called back within five minutes. He quickly rolled off a pile of one-liners, and I laughed so hard that it took a bit to get into the interview.

Boogaard then asked how Tigers head coach and general manager Willie Desjardins was doing and quickly went into a story about his only training camp under Desjardins back in 2002. At that time, the Tigers didn’t have a rookie camp, and the rookies skated in scrimmages with the veterans.

Boogaard said he bodychecked a 15-year-old into the boards hard, and the poor kid had to be taken to hospital by ambulance. Desjardins gave Boogaard the rest of training camp off, and enforcer said that was the easiest training camp he ever had.

I bought that quote up to Desjardins during a Tigers training camp a couple of years later, and he laughed. The bench boss said he flat out had fears players would get hurt running into Boogaard, because he was so big. That came on top of concerns about what would happened when Boogaard would initiate a hit.

Giving him the rest of camp off seemed like the logical thing to do.

            While Boogaard joked about that training camp memory, he initially took having the rest of that camp off the wrong way.

            After he passed, Sullivan recalled that time in training camp during a media interview. She said Boogaard came home all sad the night of that hit being dejected he couldn’t play. He said it was like he was back in kindergarten and the teachers wouldn’t let him play with the little kids because he was too big.

            That recollection brought to the forefront of how much Boogaard was in a lot of ways a little boy in a man’s body.

Branch did a good job in capturing that in his book, especially when it came to writing about Boogaard meeting Janella D’Amore, who was a figure skater from Portland, Oregon. The two met, while Boogaard was playing for the Tigers, and had a lengthy relationship, which eventually became a common-law marriage.

When the Tigers came through Portland during the 2001-02 campaign, another girl, who was one of D’Amore’s friends, expressed romantic interest in Boogaard. D’Amore tried to play matchmaker through instant messages on the computer, but Boogaard dismissed them.

Boogaard later got back in touch with D’Amore saying he wanted to get to know her better. Through exchanges, Boogaard said he didn’t like D’Amore’s friend that originally showed interest in him, because that friend was a “puck bunny.”

Boogaard and D’Amore met in person at the Wild’s summer in 2002, and he would often tell her she was too pretty for him. Branch did an excellent job of writing how cute and sweet the romance was especially at the start.

Much later in the book, childlike demeanour came out in another way. It came near the end of Boogaard’s only season with NHL’s New York Rangers and in what were the final months of his life.

He has been out for a lengthy time with a concussion, and the Rangers coaches were trying to get him back on the ice. In one skating session, he kept falling down and struggled with coordination. After being sent off the ice, he went through a range of emotions in front of team trainers, screamed people through he was a pill head and cried.

Without even reading further, you knew the sad ending was around the corner.

Over the years, Boogaard was a character that always intrigued me. Desjardins really liked him, like really liked him.

Had Boogaard not been an overage player in the one season both were in Medicine Hat, it is pretty safe to Desjardins would have ensured the enforcer was on the Tigers roster for the whole campaign. Major junior teams can only have three overage players, and those spots are usually held for scorers or strong veteran defencemen. Boogaard was released after playing 27 regular season games that campaign.

Desjardins, who is the current head coach of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, saw a potential for Boogaard to be more that a fighter in hockey talking about how well the big man could skate, had an ability to play defence and possessed a booming shot that could be developed.

While watching him play on TV, it was obviously Boogaard could skate extremely well, which was unreal to see from a guy his size. I remember him being able to get down to block shot and then bounce up quickly to help a play transition down ice.

Fighting alone didn’t get Boogaard into the NHL. It was his ability to do other things to go in hand with fighting that did.

Unfortunately, fighting is what helped bring a tragic end to his story.

Boogaard’s death is one thing that cemented me in believing that fighting has to be taken out of hockey, and more serious attention has to be given to concussion injuries.

Whenever someone in Medicine Hat was adamant that fighting needed to remain in hockey and that concussion injuries are not a big deal, I always brought up Boogaard.

I would ask would you rather have Boogaard live the life he did, or would you rather have him here now? The answer would always be it would have been better to have Boogaard here now.

Currently, Boogaard’s family still has a wrongful-death suit filed against the NHL. The late enforcer was always a huge fan favourite, but with the suit before the courts, you can be sure a number of people involved with the league will try to minimize memories of Boogaard’s time in “The Show.”

It will be up to Boogaard’s friends and those that knew him to ensure his memory stays alive regarding how much of a good and quality guy he was.

Rest in peace Boogey. You will forever be missed.

If you have any feedback on this blog, feel free to email comments to stankssports@gmail.com.