Monthly Archives: January 2017

It’s Wayne’s World for Simmonds as he’s named NHL All-Star Game MVP

30 Monday Jan 2017

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The 2017 NHL All-Star Game proved to be Wayne’s World, and not because former Edmonton Oilers great Wayne Gretzky was behind the bench coaching.

Flyers' Wayne Simmonds goes back to L.A., takes home NHL All-Star-Game MVP honor.

Flyers’ Wayne Simmonds goes back to L.A., takes home NHL All-Star-Game MVP honor.

Philadelphia Flyers right wing Wayne Simmonds was the star of the game played at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Simmonds scored 3 goals, including the game-winner that gave the NHL’s Metropolitan Division a 4-3 victory over the Pacific Division in a three-on-three format.

“It’s all pretty surreal,” Simmonds said after the game. “It’s awesome. It’s definitely an honor. There’s so many great players in our game today, to be recognized as an All-Star is pretty special to me.”

Simmonds is only the second black player in NHL history to be chosen All-Star Game MVP. Oilers goaltender Grant Fuhr – a  2003 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee – received the honor in 1986.

“I think if you look around the game now, you;re starting to see different ethnicities, not only black, but it’s starting to open up a little bit, and that’s the goal here,” Simmonds said. “Hockey is for everyone, so it’s a great sport. I’m trying to be a good ambassador and stuff like that, so it’s great.”

Simmonds serves on the board of directors of the Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation which was created by the late Flyers owner, Ed Snider, to build lives, unite communities, and teach life skills through hockey.

The All-Star game and the MVP honor was a Hollywood ending of sorts for Simmonds, who was traded by the Los Angeles Kings to the Flyers six seasons ago. Simmonds wasn’t considered the centerpiece of that deal –  center Bryaden Schenn was.

The Flyers knew they were getting a rugged forward in Simmonds, a reliable player who could chip in a few goals, play on a defensive line, and fight. But he evolved into is the Flyers’ leading goal scorer over the last two seasons.

He tops the team in goals so far this season with 21 and is third on the team in overall points – the combination of goals and assists – with 38.

Simmonds is regarded as one of the NHL’s best close-in scorers, using his wiry-but-solid 6-foot-2, 185-pound frame to screen goaltenders and his quick hands to tap in rebounds or tip in shots from teammates.

Former Flyers Head Coach Peter Laviolette knew he had a diamond in the rough in Simmonds and knew exactly where to put him on the ice when he arrived from L.A. in 2011.

“I just remember Coach Laviolette just putting me net front on the power play from first practice when I got to Philadelphia,” Simmonds said. “From then on out, it was kind of just something that I relished, and I just tried to make the best of my opportunity. We’re sitting here right now, so so far, so good.”

Simmonds has become a prototype for the NHL power forward position. At NHL drafts, several young forwards chosen – particularly players of color – have said that they model their game after Simmonds’. And some NHL general managers talk about looking for Wayne Simmonds-like players in the draft.

 

 

 

 

Edmonton Oilers’ Jujhar Khaira scores 1st goal, makes hockey history

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

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Congratulations to Edmonton Oilers center Jujhar Khaira for scoring his first National Hockey League goal on Monday and making history by becoming  only the third  Indo-Canadian player to pot a goal in the league.

Edmonton Oilers center Jujhar Khaira.

Edmonton Oilers center Jujhar Khaira.

Khaira, Edmonton’s 2012 third-round draft pick, took a pass from teammate Mark Letestu and fired the puck by Arizona Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith in the second period, giving the Oilers a 2-0 lead on the way to a 3-1 win at Edmonton’s Rogers Place.

We introduced Khaira to Color of Hockey readers in 2014 when he was a member of the Western Hockey League’s  Everett Silvertips, which had two other players of Punjabi descent on the roster at the time.

With his goal Monday, the Surrey, British Columbia-born Khaira joins Robin Bawa  and Manny Malhotra in the record books. Bawa, a right wing, scored 6 goals and 1 assist in 61 games for the Washington Capitals, Anaheim Mighty Ducks and San Jose Sharks in the late 1980s and mid-1990s.

Malhotra, who was chosen by the New York Rangers with the seventh overall pick in the 1998 NHL Draft, tallied 116 goals and 179 assists in 991 games for the Rangers, the Sharks, Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes, Vancouver Canucks, Montreal Canadiens, and Columbus Blue Jackets.

Khaira, who is Sikh, told Canada’s Sportnet that his first NHL goal was a dream come true.

“You think about it, at the back of your mind, always,” he told reporters after the game. “Growing up as a kid, playing street hockey, you always picture it in your head as you’re playing. It’s a reality now, and it feels good.”

And it felt great for Canada’s South Asian community, which has grown so much in size and hockey interest that Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts in Punjabi.
“Because this community has had to endure and sacrifice, our parents and grandparents, it’s really rewarding when you see young people achieve success in new areas,” Bhupinder Hundal, a member of Hockey Night in Canada’s Punjabi broadcast team, told CBC. “A hundred years ago people would come here and they couldn’t bring their families. They didn’t have the right to vote and they couldn’t own property. Now Jujhar Khaira can play hockey for the Edmonton Oilers.”

 

Lightning draftee Bokondji Imama goes from bare-knuckled brawler to bar down scorer

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Saint John Sea Dogs left wing Bokondji Imama has gone from scrapper to sniper.

The rugged 20-year-old, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s sixth-round pick in the 2015 National Hockey League Draft, has a reputation as one of the fiercest fighters in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

But these days, Imama is scaring QMJHL goaltenders as much as opposing skaters. He has 27 goals and 10 assists in 40 QMJHL regular season games, up from 7 goals and 19 assists in 47 games during the 2015-16 season.

“I always try to prove to everyone that I’m not just a fighter, I’m also a player” Imama told me recently. “I consider myself as a power forward. This year, I’ve had a chance to prove it with the ice time that the coach gives me.”

Thanks to summer work on his shooting and skating, Saint John Sea Dogs forward Bokondji Imama a scoring threat this season (Photo/St. John Sea Dogs).

Thanks to summer work on his shooting and skating, Saint John Sea Dogs forward Bokondji Imama is a serious scoring threat this season (Photo/David Connell/St. John Sea Dogs).

Imama is the Sea Dogs’ top goal-scorer this season, one ahead of right wing Mathieu Joseph – a Tampa Bay 2015 fourth-round draft pick who played on Canada’s Silver Medal-winning team at the 2017 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship –  and center Matthew Highmore.

Imama’s 37 points – the combination of goals and assists – makes him the team’s fourth-leading scorer. Highmore’s 65 points – 26 goals and 39 assists  in 42 games- tops the team. Joseph, who signed a three-year, entry-level deal with the Lightning before the World Juniors, is second with 26 goals, 24 assists in 31 regular season games.

Imama’s  evolution from a bare-knuckled brawler to bar down goal scorer is also reflected by fewer trips to the penalty box. He has 62 penalty minutes so far  this season.

He collected 86 penalty minutes last season and probably would have had more except for a 15-game suspension  in December 2015 for leaving the bench to defend an under-age 15-year-old rookie teammate against an experienced enforcer and a seven-game suspension in April 2016  for a hit on then-Cape Breton Screaming Eagles defenseman Tobie Pauquette-Bisson.

What’s most striking is that Imama is fighting less this season. The website hockeyfights.com  notes that he’s fought only three times in QMJHL games so far this season. He had one scrap for the Lightning in a September 2016 preseason game against the Nashville Predators.

Imama had five fights in 2015-16 and a whopping 15  bouts in the 2014-15 season, according to hockeyfights.com.

The change in Imama’s game is part of a plan to show that the Montreal native, the son of immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa, is more than just a pair of fists as he completes his final QMJHL season and embarks on a professional hockey career.

“It started from my summer training, pretty much. I hired a skills coach, working on my offensive side, working on my power skating, working on my hands, working on my release,” the French-Canadian Imama told me recently. “The Saint John coach (Danny Flynn) has given me more responsibilities, putting me on the power play, putting me in different places. I’m doing great going to the net, putting puck on net.”

Lightning officials were impressed with what they saw of Imama offensively at the team’s development camp in Florida June 2016. He led a camp  3-on-3 tournament with 8 goals and tied Sea Dogs teammate Joseph for overall points in the tourney with 10.

Saint John Sea Dogs forward Bokondji Imama is putting the puck in the net more and fighting less, per instructions by the Tampa Bay Lightning (Photo/Saint John Sea Dogs).

Saint John Sea Dogs forward Bokondji Imama is putting the puck in the net more and fighting less, per instructions by the Tampa Bay Lightning (Photo/David Connell/Saint John Sea Dogs).

Still, Tampa Bay cut Imama during September’s training camp and sent him back to Saint John, the largest city in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. But the ‘Bolts organization gave him to-do list for his return to the Q.

“From the first day they released me from camp, it was clear: they don’t want to see me fight,  they don’t want to see me get suspended,” Imama said. “They want to see me on the ice, working on my game, scoring goals obviously, making some good plays, being an effective hockey player for my team.”

By following their prescription,  Imama says this has been his most rewarding season in the QMJHL.

He hopes that it ends with the Sea Dogs – currently in first place in the Q’s Maritimes Division – winning the President’s Cup league championship and later capturing the Memorial Cup as the top Canadian Hockey League team.

But  the 6-foot-1, 217-pound forward has no illusions about what will be expected of him in his pro career, whether it’s with Tampa Bay or its farm teams  in the American Hockey League or the ECHL.

“To be realistic, when I’m going to pro level, I’ll have to come back to myself, to be more of a grinder, more of a fighter,” he told me. “Right now, as a 20-year-old, I have the chance to play a more offensive dimension. So I’m pretty grateful and I’m having a lot of fun. But once I start playing pro, I have to get back to the old me, if I can say that.”

To that end, Imama looks to Philadelphia Flyers right wing Wayne Simmonds and Edmonton Oilers left wing  Milan Lucic  – tough customers who are also elite goal scorers – for inspiration.

“Those kind of players, I love to watch them play,” he said. “They’re big guys, tough players, they bring  size and meanness to their team. But also, the coach will put them in different situations.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lights out for the shootout in championship games?

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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There’s still an afterglow on this side of the border following the United States’ dramatic 5-4 comeback win over Canada in one of the greatest International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship gold medal games ever played.

But there’s still also a bitter taste – even among some Team USA  fans – that such a thrilling, entertaining, dramatic, and excellently-played championship game was decided by a five-round shootout after an overtime session.

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From 1980 U.S. hockey Miracle on Ice Gold Medal Olympian Mike Eruzione to newly-forged hockey fan Tony X  deciding a championship game with a duel between a shooter and a goaltender was about as satisfying as the final episodes of “The Sopranos,” HBO’s “The Night Of,” or the Bobby Ewing dream sequence on “Dallas” in the 1980s.

Of course, some folks say that complaints about Thursday night’s shootout are merely sour grapes from fans who didn’t like the outcome of the game.

I have mixed feelings about shootouts. I don’t think any championship in any sport should be decided by any sort of shootout.

Can you imagine the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Caveliers deciding an NBA championship series on free throw or three-point shootouts?  Or a deadlocked Super Bowl being settled by a field goal kickers duel from 50-yards out?  Or a tied World Series baseball game being won or loss in a home run derby after the traditional nine innings?

Still, I understand the excitement that hockey shootouts can produce. I was at the U.S.-Russia game at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi when Washington Capitals forward T.J. Oshie scored four shootout goals in an unbelievable, pressure-filled exhibition of skill.

The National Hockey League started using the shootout for regular season games in the 2005-06. But the league doesn’t use it for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The IIHF has used the shootout to decide deadlocked world championship and Olympic games since 1992.

What do you think? Should the shootout stay or go in championship games?

 

 

Jordan Greenway continues to impress at IIHF World Junior Championship

01 Sunday Jan 2017

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Team USA's Jordan Greenway

Team USA’s Jordan Greenway

If the U.S. team at the International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championship was a 1960s pop music group, it would probably be called Jordan and the Americans (Okay, I had to get some kind of Jay and the Americans reference in there before the end of the year).

Boston University forward Jordan Greenway continued his impressive play for Team USA at the tournament Saturday, by notching a goal and an assist and by generally wrecking havoc on Team Canada in the U.S.’s 3-1 victory at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre.

Greenway, a 2015 Minnesota Wild second round draft pick, made his 6-foot-5, 230-pound presence felt at both ends of the ice and made life miserable for Team Canada’s goaltender with numerous close-range stuff-in attempts.

His play Saturday caught the attention of analysts on the NHL Network and several folks on social media.

More from Chris Peters’ The United States of Hockey blog:  The way Greenway has developed over the last two years should give a lot of hope to Minnesota Wild fans. He played like the power forward he was brought onto this team to be, using his frame to get pucks to the net and make some plays. The move he made to score Team USA’s second goal showed his combination of power and finesse. You need guys like that to impose their will on a game and I thought we saw that more today from Greenway than any other time in the tournament.