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Some big questions for some players of color ahead of the 2018-19 NHL season

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Calgary Flames, Jordan Greenway, Joshua Ho-Sang, Minnesota Wild, New York Islanders, Oliver Kylington, Philadelphia Flyers, Spencer Foo, Wayne Simmonds

National Hockey League training camps open this week and the season begins October 3 with the Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals facing the Boston Bruins.

The 2017-18 NHL season is chock full of interesting story lines involving players of color that are worth paying attention to. Here are a few:

N.Y. Islanders forward Joshua Ho-Sang starts the 2017-18 season with a clean slate with new coach and GM.

THE NEW YORK ISLANDERS AND JOSH HO-SANG. CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED? It’s safe to say that the Islanders and right wing  Joshua Ho-Sang, the team’s 2014 first-round draft pick, have fit as well as an ice skating rink inside Brooklyn’s basketball-perfect Barclays Center.

Previous Islanders management complained that Ho-Sang was too head strong and defensively insufficient, among other things. Ho-Sang griped that the old Islanders brain trust overlooked similar deficiencies of other players and unjustly banished him to the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the Isles’ American Hockey League farm team, while others skated scot free.

Well, there are new sheriffs on Long Island in General Manager Lou Lamoriello and Head Coach Barry Trotz, who guided the Capitals to the Cup last season by getting the best out of superstar forward Alex Ovechkin, and they seem determined to make the Isles/Ho-Sang marriage work.

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Trotz and Lamoriello say Ho-Sang starts off with a clean slate under their regime And Ho-Sang appears to be singing from the same hymnal.

“Josh has to be part of our future,” Trotz told Stan Fischler last month. “He’s a talent who needs to be understood better than he has been. In this case, Lou will be good. My belief is that the kid has been misunderstood because he looks at the game differently.”

Ho-Sang told NHL.com that the new management has “been tremendous in working with me and talking to me. ”

“I really don’t want to get into what they’ve talked to me about, but it’s all been positive,” he told NHL.com. “Every conversation that I’ve had with them since the moment they became part of the organization has just been teaching.”

In addition to featuring a new attitude, Ho-Sang will feature a new number with the Islanders, if he makes the team, because notoriously old school Lamoriello has squashed players wearing high-numbered jerseys for 2018-19.

Ho-Sang wore No. 66 in previous stints with the Isles, which caused many hockey purists to lose their minds because it was Hockey Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux’s number during his glory years with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ho-Sang will wear No. 26.

Philadelphia Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds is in the final year of a six-year deal.

WHAT ABOUT WAYNE?  Philadelphia Flyers right wing Wayne Simmonds enters the season in the last year of his six-year, $23.85 million contract. Talks about an extension with one of the team’s most prolific goal scorers have been slow, raising question about whether the Flyers are interested in jumping off and moving on from the “Wayne Train.”

Adding fuel to the speculation are the Flyers’ free agent signing of former Toronto Maple Leafs left wing James Van Riemsdyk and the late 2017-18 rise of  19-year-old center Nolan Patrick, the Flyers’ 2017 first-round draft pick.

Like Simmonds, Patrick and Van Riemsdyk are net-front players who score bunches of goals by parking themselves in front of opposing goaltenders in hopes of tip-in shots or fat rebounds.

And Simmonds is coming off a down scoring season – sort of.  He had 24 goals and 22 assists in 75 regular season games last season and no goals and 2 assists in six Stanley Cup Playoff contests.

His 24 goals came after he scored 31 in 2016-17 and 32 in 2015-16. Some context here: Simmonds managed the 24 goals despite a laundry list of injuries that included a tear in his pelvic area, a pulled groin, fractured ankle, torn ligament in his thumb and a busted mouth twice. Still, he only missed seven games last season.

Flyers General Manager Ron Hextall insists that the team would like to retain Simmonds and Simmonds has indicated that he wants to finish his playing career in Philadelphia.

“For being injured, I didn’t have a bad season last year, but it’s still not to my best ability” Simmonds told reporters in August. “So we continue to talk, we continue to talk. It is what it is right now.”

Forward Nick Suzuki, a former Vegas Golden Knights 2017 first-round draft, was traded to Montreal.

WILL THE MONTREAL CANADIENS RIDE SUZUKI BACK TO THE PLAYOFFS? The Canadiens finally ended the Max Paciorietty saga Monday by trading the high-scoring left wing and team captain to the Vegas Golden Knights for center Nick Suzuki, who was a Knights’ 2017 first-round draft pick, forward Tomas Tatar, and a 2019 second-round draft pick.

The trade caused howls among many Canadiens fans who still suffer bad flashbacks from the the team swapping defenseman P.K. Subban to the Nashville Predators for blue-liner Shea Weber in June 2016 and shipping all-world goaltender Patrick Roy to the Colorado Avalanche in December 1995.

The Paciorietty trade may look lopsided sided now – he has 226 goals and 222 assists in 626 NHL regular season games – But the 19-year-old Suzuki is no slouch. He impressed the Golden Knights in the team inaugural training camp, though he didn’t make the team last season.

Instead, Suzuki lit it up with the Owen Sound Attack of the Ontario Hockey League in 2017-18. He tallied 42 goals and 58 assists in 64 OHL regular season games. He had 45 goals and 51 assists in 65 games in 2016-17.

“Suzuki was the key piece because we like a young prospect that was picked 13th overall, which I believe at the time we had at 11 on our list,” Montreal General Manager Marc Bergevin told reporters after the trade.

The question is when will Suzuki arrive in Montreal? The OHL is one thing, the NHL is another. Some prospects need time and patience – things that are often in short supply in in hockey-crazed Montreal.

WILL THE KIDS STICK? A number of highly-touted prospects who’ve already had a small tastes of the NHL are heading to training camps looking to stay in the big leagues.

Minnesota Wild rookie left wing Jordan Greenway had a dream season in 2017-18: Becoming the first African-American to play on a U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, skate for Hockey East champion Boston University, and play for the Wild in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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Now the 21-year-old, Wild 2015  second-round draft pick has got to grind it out in training camp to land a permanent job in Minnesota.

“We’re just looking at his smarts, how he adjusts,” Wild first-year General Manager Paul Fenton told The Athletic at the NHL Prospect Tournament in Traverse City, Michigan. “Being able to play in the Olympics gave him a different dimension to where he was playing in college hockey. To turn pro and play in the playoffs, from afar I was watching and he looked like he adjusted to the pro game right away. That’s what we’re looking to see – how he was able to take the summer and take his maturity an go forward.”

Calgary Flames rookie forward Spencer Foo scored 2 goals in four NHL games last season.

The Calgary Flames are doing the same thing with right wing Spencer Foo and defenseman Oliver Kylington.

Foo, a high-scoring, highly-coveted free agent from NCAA Division I Union College, signed with Calgary in June 2017, appeared in four games with the Flames late in 2017-18 and scored 2 goals.

“It’s going to be a blast,” Foo told Canada’s Global News of the upcoming season. “First game of the season is always exciting whether it’s exhibition or not. I think everyone’s pretty pumped.”

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Foo spent most of the 2017-18 season with the Stockton Heat, the Flames’ AHL farm team, where he was third in scoring with 20 goals and 19 assists in 62 regular season games.

He was there with Kylington, a 21-year-old  blue-liner from Stockholm, Sweden. Kylington was the team’s seventh-leading scorer with 7 goals and 28 assists in 62 regular season contests.

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“There’s a spot available” on the Calgary roster, Kylington told The Montreal Gazette. “And it’s a lot of work to get that spot. I feel ready, I’ve been training hard this summer and putting a lot of grind in the gym and mentally preparing myself for this year and this camp.”

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. And download the Color of Hockey podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.

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‘Making Coco’ documentary goes behind the mask of Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr

03 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Fred Brathwaite, Glen Sather, Grant Fuhr, Mark Messier, St. Louis Blues, Toronto Maple Leafs, Wayne Grettzky

Grant Fuhr was a man of few words during his National Hockey League career.

“Back then, five words was a long conversation for me,” Fuhr told me recently.

Grant Fuhr was Edmonton’s first-round draft pick in 1981.

Fuhr preferred to let his play in goal do the talking, winning five Stanley Cup championships with the Edmonton Oilers from 1984 to 1990, capturing the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender in 1988, being named one of the NHL’s 100 Greatest Players, and becoming the first black player to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003.

“The Great One,” Hall of Fame center Wayne Gretzky,  also vouched for his former Oilers teammate, calling him “the greatest goalie that ever lived.”

Fuhr tells his story with the help of Gretzky and other NHL legends in Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story,” a Sportsnet documentary that goes behind the mask of one of the league’s most acrobatic, dominating, and enigmatic goaltenders.

“I think the biggest thing is it’s a chance for people to see what my life was actually like,” said Fuhr, who was nicknamed “Coco” during his playing days. “There has always been speculation, guessing and such, and everybody thinks that the world is glamorous all of the time.”

Audiences will get a first glimpse of the film at a private screening in Toronto during the Toronto Film Festival on Tuesday, September 11. The documentary will have its world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival on Saturday, September 29, as part of the festival’s closing gala.

“Making Coco” will be televised in December on Sportsnet in Canada. The film’s producer says he’s still working on when and where it will be shown in the United States and elsewhere.

“Grant’s often forgotten on those great Oliers team because there were so many great players,” said Adam Scorgie, producer of the documentary directed by Don Metz. “You had arguably one of the greatest players to ever play (Gretzky), one of the greatest leaders in Mark Messier and you forget how good Grant Fuhr was backstopping that team and all the boundaries he broke within the NHL.  He was the first black superstar, the first to win the Stanley Cup and the first black to be inducted in the Hall of Fame.”

The Oilers teams of Fuhr’s era were known for their offensive prowess, not their defensive skill. Yes, they had a Hall of Famer in smooth-skating offensive-minded defensman Paul Coffey, who states flatly in “Making Coco” that “I don’t block shots.”

The Oilers’ defense was its offense, which often left Fuhr to fend for himself at the other end of the rink.

“I licked my chops every time we were going to play them ’cause I knew I was going to get three or four two-on-ones guaranteed,” Tony McKegney, the NHL’s first black player to score 40 goals in a season, told me recently. “Well, we did and we would lose out there 7 to 4 or something like that. During those games, Grant would make five or seven spectacular saves. Obviously, Wayne and Messier and Glenn Anderson were the story, but if you asked them today they would admit they had four guys up the ice all the time to score knowing Grant was back there.”

Grant Fuhr won five Stanley Cups during 10 seasons with the offensively-gifted Edmonton Oilers. On many nights, the netminder nicknamed “Coco” had little help defensively.

Because of Edmonton’s go-go offense and gone-gone defense, Fuhr has a career goals-against average of 3.38 – the highest among all Hall of Fame goaltenders.

Other Hall inductees with regular season GAA’s over 3.00? Georges Vezina (3.28) – yeah, the trophy guy- and the New York Islanders’ Billy Smith (3.17), who has four Stanley Cup rings to Fuhr’s five.

Fuhr compiled a 403-295-114 (ties) record and posted 25 shutouts in 868 regular season games with Edmonton, the Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues, Los Angeles Kings and Calgary Flames from 1981-82 to 1999-2000. He had a 92-50 record in 150 Stanley Cup playoff games, including six shutouts.

And Fuhr wouldn’t be a true Oiler if he didn’t provide some offense. His 46 points – all assists – that places him third among NHL goalies behind Tom Barrasso’s 48 points and soon-to-be Hall of Fame inductee Martin Brodeur’s 47 points. Three of Brodeur’s points are goals that he actually scored or was given credit for.

Fuhr’s accomplishments aren’t bad for a player who many hockey experts thought was overweight, broken-down, and washed up when the Blues signed him in 1995-96.

He revived his career in St. Louis, thanks in large part to training with Bob Kersee, a world-class African-American track coach and husband of U.S. Olympic track Gold Medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

After appearing in only 49 games for three different teams in 1993-94 and 1994-95, Fuhr played in a whopping 79 games in 1995-96 and 73 contests in 1996-97 for the Blues and posted a 63-55-27 record in those two seasons.

Grant Fuhr shows off the bling from five Stanley Cup championship rings won with the Edmonton Oilers (Photo/Derek Heisler/www.derekheisler.com).

“It saved my body, it got my body through a lot,” Fuhr said of the training. “The body was good, but it became so much better. And I got a better understanding of it, what I was capable of, and how I could play around certain injuries.”

Fuhr’s legacy and longevity captivated another goaltender of color, Fred Brathwaite, who became a teammate in Fuhr’s final NHL season in Calgary.

Growing up in Ottawa, Brathwaite so idolized Fuhr that he put up a poster of the veteran goaltender in his bedroom at his mother’s house, where it still hangs today.

“Just the way he could raise his game to the level it could be,” said Brathwaite, a Hockey Canada goalie coach who was the New York Islanders’ goalie coach last season. “He might let in a goal or two, but when it came down the final thing, he’d raise his game up to help his team win Stanley Cups, or Canada Cups, and all those other things. I was very fortunate, very lucky, to play with him in his last year of hockey.”

Former NHL goalie Fred Brathwaite is such a Grant Fuhr fan that he keeps a poster of the five-time Stanley Cup winner in the bedroom of his boyhood home in Ottawa. The two became teammates on the Calgary Flames in Fuhr’s final NHL season in 1999-2000 (Photo/Fred Brathwaite).

Fuhr considers considers himself lucky, despite the ups and downs he experienced in his life and career.

The child of black and white biological parents, he was adopted by a white family in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, and was lured to the net by all the neat gear that goaltenders wear.

Small town Spruce Grove and Western Canada served as an incubator of sorts for Fuhr in the early stages of his career.

He said he never really experienced racial hostility on or off the ice the way players like forwards Devante Smith-Pelly of the Washington Capitals,  Wayne Simmonds of the Philadelphia Flyers and Nashville Predators defenseman P.K. Subban have endured in recent seasons.

“The Great One,” former Edmonton Oilers center Wayne Gretzky, calls Grant Fuhr the greatest goalie ever in “Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story.”

Fuhr thinks that the NHL’s first generation of black players – forwards Willie O’Ree, Mike Marson, Bill Riley, Val James, and McKegney ran that gauntlet for him.

“Some of the (minority) guys that played in the minors in the states, they did all the heavy lifting,” Fuhr said. “Guys like Val James, Bill Riley, Mike Marson, they did the heavy lifting, they went through all the abuse.”

He said he didn’t feel or sense racism’s sting until he was traded to the Sabres in 1992-93 and after a suburban country club where other Sabres players and team officials were members initially denied him membership.

Retired Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla being interviewed about what it was like being an opponent and later a teammate of Grant Fuhr in “Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story).

“The more you traveled in the states, the more you could see it (racism). You live in an element where race matters a little bit and people have some pointed views on it,” he said.  “You would think that as time progresses and as history progresses that it would get better. And, if anything, in the last for or five years, it has taken steps backwards.”

Fuhr doesn’t shy away in the film from discussing perhaps the lowest point in his career – a one-year suspension by the NHL in 1990 after he admitted that he abused cocaine from 1983 to 1989. The league reinstated him after he served five months of the penalty.

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“I went to the school of life and, unfortunately, not everything runs as smoothly as it’s supposed to. You make mistakes along the way, and there’s a great price to pay,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is that I lived life – good, bad and otherwise.

“I wasn’t sheltered from anything. I didn’t protect myself from anything. So, yeah, you can make mistakes and still have a positive life out of it,” he added. “There are things in school that they don’t teach you. The only way to learn ’em is by falling on your own. Yeah, I tripped and fell on my face a few times.”

But from the falls, Fuhr said he’s now able to teach others on how to avoid stumbling.

“Kids that I help out now, talk to and such, I get a little bit of credibility because of having been through it instead of someone telling them ‘Hey, this is how it has to be’ having never been through it.  Having been though it, and been through it in a public way, I get a little more credibility from them.”

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. And download the Color of Hockey podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.

 

 

 

 

 

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Calgary Flames-Edmonton Oilers game showcases hockey’s diversity

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Al Montoya, Calgary Flames, Darnell Nurse, Edmonton Oilers, Ethan Bear, Jujhar Khaira, Paul Jerrard, Spencer Foo

The Calgary Flames‘ 3-2 win Saturday over the Edmonton Oilers had little impact on the standings – neither National Hockey League Western Conference team is within Stanley CupPlayoffs range.

However, the game at Calgary’s Saddledome was meaningful in terms of the diversity that was on display, further showing that the face of hockey is steadily changing.

The game featured the NHL debut of Flames forward Spencer Foo, a high-scoring former star at NCAA Division I Union College. An Edmonton native, Foo played 12:45 minutes, including 1:20 minutes on the power play, and registered a shot on goal.

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Giving instructions to Foo and other Flames players was assistant coach Paul Jerrard, currently the only black NHL coach who stands the bench during games. He traded a stick for a clipboard after a minor league hockey career that spanned from 1987-88 to 1996-97. He did appear in five games for the Minnesota North Stars in 1988-89.

“There isn’t anybody of color I emulated in coaching, I just wanted to push hard and work and see where it would take me,” Jerrard told Canada’s Sportsnet in February. “It would be interesting to see what would happen if there was a black coach in the league. There might be one someday, I don’t know.”

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Trying to keep Foo and the youthful Flames at bay on the Oilers back end Saturday night were defensemen Darnell Nurse and Ethan Bear and goaltender Al Montoya.

Nurse was the seventh overall pick in the 2014 NHL draft, one of two black blue-liners chosen in the first round. The other was Columbus Blue Jackets defender Seth Jones (chosen fourth overall by the Nashville Predators). Nurse has 6 goals and 19 assists in 79 games for the Oilers.

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Bear, who is from the Ochapowace First Nation in southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada, was an Edmonton 2015 fifth-round draft pick. The NHL rookie has a goal and 3 assists in 15 games with the Oilers.

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Montoya, who was traded to the Oilers by the Montreal Canadiens, became the NHL’s first Cuban-American player when the New York Rangers chose him with the sixth overall pick in the 2004 NHL Draft.

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Oilers left wing Jujhar Khaira, a Canadian of South Asian heritage, logged 11:02 minutes of ice time Saturday night, including 59 seconds on the power play and 1:15 minutes killing penalties.

Khaira, an Oilers 2013 third-round pick, has 11 goals and 10 assists in 66 games for Edmonton.

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Diversity in Saturday’s game wasn’t limited to players and coaches. Shandor Alphonso, a black Canadian, was one of the two linesmen working the game.

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And, of course,  David Amber manned the broadcast studio as host of Hockey Night in Canada’s late game.

Hockey Night in Canada hosts David Amber (L) and Ron MacLean (Photo/CNW Group/Sportsnet).

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. And download the Color of Hockey podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play

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Spencer Foo makes NHL debut with Calgary Flames in the Battle of Alberta

31 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Philadelphia Flyers, Spencer Foo

What better way for right wing Spencer Foo to make his National Hockey League debut with the Calgary Flames than to play in the Battle of Alberta against the rival Edmonton Oilers Saturday night.

The Flames recalled Foo from the Stockton Heat, Calgary’s American Hockey League farm team, Wednesday in time for the Edmonton native to face the team he watched growing up.

Spencer Foo is excited about being recalled to the Calgary Flames from the AHL Stockton Heat where he was third on the team in scoring (Photo/Jack Lima).

“It’s going to be a cool night for me,” Foo told reporters. “Obviously, I have a lot of family and friends coming down from Edmonton, so it’s going to be a fun one.

“I grew up watching the Battle of Alberta all the time, so it’s just going to be special to finally be able to be part of it.”

Foo, 23, signed with Calgary after being one of the summer’s most sought-after free agents. He decided to go pro after his junior year at NCAA Division I Union College, where he tallied 26 goals and 36 assists in 38 games in 2016-17.

The Flames, Oilers and Philadelphia Flyers were among the teams that sought Foo’s services with Calgary winning out in the end.

“Calgary presented itself with a great opportunity & (it’s) also a team that’s right on the verge of winning,” Foo tweeted after he committed to the Flames in June.

Spencer Foo scored 20 goals for AHL Stockton after a slow start. He’ll make his NHL debut with the Calgary Flames Saturday night (Photo/Jack Lima).

Foo didn’t make the Flames roster out of training camp. Instead, he was sent to Stockton, California, where he was third on the team before his recall with 20 goals and 17 assists in 59 regular season games.

He scored goals in bunches in the AHL after netting only one goal in his first 19 minor league games.

“I think I was just giving other players a little too much respect out there and I wasn’t fully playing my game,” he told reporters. “But once I was able to get that out of my head and just started playing really hard and being hard to play against, I think that’s kind of when it all turned around for me.”

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook and Twitter @ColorOfHockey. And download the Color of Hockey podcast from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play.

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N.Y. Islanders are ready for Freddy, name Brathwaite as new goalie coach

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Calgary Flames, Frantz Jean, Fred Brathwaite, Hockey Canada, New York Islanders, St. Louis Blues, Sudashan Maharaj, Tampa Bay Lightning

Brooklyn is ready for Freddy.

Fred Brathwaite is the New York Islanders’ new goalie coach (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images)

The New York Islanders Monday named retired National Hockey League goaltender Fred Brathwaite as the team’s new goalie coach.

“He’s ready for this next step and we look forward to him working with our organization’s goalies,” Islanders Head Coach Doug Weight said.

Brathwaite, 44, was goalie coach for Hockey Canada’s Under-18 team for the last three seasons. Before that, he coached goalies for Canada’s Under-20 program and for Adler Mannheim in the German Professional League during the 2013-14 season.

His former Hockey Canada students include NHL draftees Carter Hart, a 2016 Philadelphia Flyers second-round draft pick, Zach Fucale, a 2013 Montreal Canadiens third-round selection, and Eric Comrie, taken in the second-round in 2013 by the Winnipeg Jets.

“Fred’s experiences at just about every level of hockey make him a tremendous addition to our hockey club,” Weight said. “Not only has he has a solid NHL career, but he’s also worked with some of the top net-minders coming out of Hockey Canada.”

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Brathwaite spent nine seasons in the NHL, occupying the net for the Edmonton Oilers, St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets. He posted an NHL career record of 81 wins, 99 losses and 37 ties with a 2.73 goals-against average and .901 save percentage in 254 regular seasons games. He had 15 shutouts.

The well-traveled goalie also played for the Syracuse Crunch and Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League, Ak Bars Kazan and Avangard Omsk of the Russian Superleague (now the Kontenental Hockey League) and Adler Mannheim of  Germany’s DEL. Brathwaite won Goaltender of the Year in the RSL in 2005-06 and Player of the Year in 2008-09 in the DEL with Adler.

He appeared in only one Stanley Cup Playoffs game, for the Blues in 2001-02, and was on the ice for only a minute. But Brathwaite did earn championship hardware during his North American playing days, winning a Memorial Cup with the Ontario Hockey League’s  Oshawa Generals in 1990 with a bruising young teammate named Eric Lindros.

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Getting the Islanders job fulfills Brathwaite’s goal of returning to the big leagues as a coach.

“I would love to be an NHL goalie coach,” he told the Color of Hockey in June 2015 “And having this opportunity with Hockey Canada is helping me prepare for that. And it’s really not that bad paying dues when you end up getting the best kids in the country to work with.”

Brathwaite becomes the third goalie coach of color working for an NHL team. Sudarshan Maharaj runs the goalies for the Anaheim Ducks and Frantz Jean coaches for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Former NHLer Fred Brathwaite has been hired by the #Isles as head goaltending coach. https://t.co/bg4stmMYR1

— InGoal Magazine (@InGoalMedia) July 10, 2017

Brathwaite replaces former NHL goalie Mike Dunham as the Isles’ netminder boss. The Brooklyn-based team ranked 23rd among the NHL’s 30 teams with a 2.90 goals-against average last season under Dunham.

Goalies Thomas Greiss, Jaroslav Halak, and Jean-Francois Berube surrendered 231 of the 238 goals that opposing teams scored in 2016-17.

Follow the Color of Hockey on Facebook or Twitter @ColorOfHockey.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ready for Freddy? Fred Brathwaite works toward becoming an NHL goalie coach

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Braden Holtby, Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Edmonton Oilers, Fred Brathwaite, Henrik Lundqvist, Hockey Canada, St. Louis Blues, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals

Like many other retired National Hockey League players who want to remain part of the game, Fred Brathwaite is patiently paying his dues in hopes of getting back in the league as a coach.

But instead of the endless back-road bus rides that fledgling major junior and minor league hockey coaches usually endure, Brathwaite is doing his apprenticeship in the pressure-packed spotlight as goaltender consultant for Hockey Canada. And he’s doing it well.

Hockey Canada goalie coach Fred Brathwaite (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images)

Hockey Canada goalie coach Fred Brathwaite (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images)

Under his guidance, Canada’s goaltenders backstopped the country’s Under-20 team to a Gold Medal at the International Ice Hockey Federation Junior World Championship in Toronto/Montreal in January and a Bronze Medal at the IIHF’s Under-18 championship in Zug, Switzerland, last month.

“I would love to be an NHL goalie coach,” said Brathwaite, who played 254 games for the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, and Columbus Blue Jackets over nine NHL seasons. “And having this opportunity with Hockey Canada is helping me prepare for that. And it’s really not that bad paying dues when you end up getting the best kids in the country to work with.”

Indeed. Zach Fucale, a Montreal Canadiens 2013 second-round draft pick who played for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s  Quebec Remparts in 2014-15, and Eric Comrie, the Winnipeg Jets 2013 second-round pick who skated for the Western Hockey League’s Tri-City Americans, provided serious goaltending for Canada at the worlds.

Fucale appeared in five games at the world juniors, posting a 1.20 goals against average and .939 save percentage. Comrie played in two games and had a 1.50 goals-against average and 933 save percentage.

“I’m very fortunate and very proud to be working with Hockey Canada,” Brathwaite told me recently. “Anytime you get a chance to wear your country’s flag, it’s an honor. “There’s still a little bit more I can learn about being an NHL goalie coach. And having this opportunity with Hockey Canada is helping me prepare for that.”

Goalies Zach Fucale (left) and Eric Comrie (right) with goalie coach Fred  Brathwaite at 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada)

Goalies Zach Fucale (left) and Eric Comrie (right) with goalie coach Fred Brathwaite at 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship (Photo/ Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada)

Brathwaite began preparing for a career transition in 2010-11 while he was playing for the Adler Mannheim Eagles of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga.  At 39, he wanted to play one more season. But when no good offers came along, the man who shares the same real name as legendary rapper Fab Five Freddy became Mannheim’s goalie coach.

He quickly learned that the change from player to coach isn’t an easy one. “It’s a little more difficult then I thought,” he said. “Before I could control what’s happening in a game by playing and now, sitting up in the stands, you have no control. You just hope the kids play well, the team plays well, and, hopefully, you’ve prepared them as well as you could.”

While in Germany, Brathwaite stayed in touch with Hockey Canada. As a goaltender for the Canadian national team in 1998-99 and member of Canada’s world championship squads in 1998-99 and 2000-01, he was familiar with the organization’s brain trust and had no problems in being a pest about employment.

“Every time I would see those guys I’d keep bugging them, asking them when are they going to give me an opportunity,” he told me.

Opportunity knocked when Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s vice president for hockey operations, national teams, called  in 2013 and “kind of offered me a job,” Brathwaite recalled

“I wouldn’t say it fell in my lap by any means because I kept bugging them and bugging them until they kind of gave in,” he said.

In Brathwaite, Hockey Canada tapped a former goaltender who won a Memorial Cup with the Oshawa Generals in 1990 with a bruising young teammate named Eric Lindros; posted a 81-91-37 NHL record with 15 shutouts and a 2.73 goals-against average; and became a standout goalie in Russia and Germany. He was the German league’s Most Valuable Player in 2009. Not bad for a player who wasn’t drafted by an NHL team.

As Hockey Canada’s goaltending consultant, Brathwaite scouts and evaluates goalies for all of Canada’s world teams and provides on-ice coaching during international tournaments.

Fred Brathwaite at work at Canada's World Junior Selection Camp (Photo/Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images).

Fred Brathwaite at work at Canada’s World Junior Selection Camp (Photo/Matthew Murnaghan/Hockey Canada Images).

“At tournaments like that my job is keeping them (goalies) sharp, keeping them focused, and try to keep them as relaxed as possible – not to let the highs get too high and the lows get too low,” he said.

Sounds simple enough, but goalies at almost every hockey level will tell you that the position – once dismissively considered the place to stick the kid who couldn’t skate – has become one of the most complex and most scrutinized in the game.

Back in the day when Braithwaite first strapped on the pads, it was “Goalie, heal thyself” in terms of development and fixing flaws in a goaltender’s game. Most NHL head coaches either didn’t have sufficient knowledge about the position or lacked the temperament to deal with sometimes-temperamental netminders.

“When I played in Edmonton, Billy Ranford and I, we were our own goalie coach,” Brathwaite said. “Goalie coaching just wasn’t a big thing back then.”

Full-time goalie coaches in the NHL were unheard of until Warren Strelow joined the Washington Capitals’ coaching staff in 1983. Today, nearly every NHL team employs a full-time goalie coach or consultant.

Heck, even a pee wee hockey team might have a goalie coach these days.  “A lot of these junior kids that we get on the worlds teams, they probably have a guy they use in the summer, a guy on their junior team,” Brathwaite said. “And now, they’re drafted in the NHL, so they have an NHL guy as well. And then they have me. It’s a big focus now.”

Fred Brathwaite played an NHL career-high 61 games for the Calgary Flames in 1999-00. (Photo courtesy of Calgary Flames Hockey Club).

Fred Brathwaite played an NHL career-high 61 games for the Calgary Flames in 1999-00. (Photo courtesy of Calgary Flames Hockey Club).

With nearly 20 years of professional hockey experience in North America and Europe under his skates, Brathwaite is uniquely qualified to share knowledge about playing in the NHL and overseas with young goalies.

“A lot of things are very similar, especially now,” he said. “Back in the day, the NHL was more crashing the net. The goalies were a little more aggressive back then. But now you’re seeing guys like (Braden) Holtby in Washington and (New York Rangers’ Henrik) Lundqvist playing a little deeper in the net. That’s kind of more of a European style, sitting back and not being so aggressive.”

Brathwaite summed up his playing style back in the day with one word: “Messy.”

“Kind of like Martin Brodeur where you didn’t know what I’d do,” he said. “Sometimes I might stand up, sometimes I might go down. The way I played, I pretty much competed, battled. I had to be able to read the game, and that was something I was able to do.”

With Hockey Canada, Brathwaite is trying to get a bead on how other countries are developing their goalies. He and former NHL goalies Corey Hirsch and Rick Wamsley traveled to Sweden and Finland Sweden last fall to see what those countries are doing to produce talents like Lundqvist and Renne.

“What we noticed is they’re just more organized as a group in the way they’re doing the goalie structure,” Brathwaite said. “In North America, there are just some many different goalie coaches all over the place. Something that we would like to try is to get everybody on the same page: the kids learn how to skate and catch, do all the basics and fundamentals first before they start to get into different styles.”

While some in the hockey community fret that Europe is producing better goaltenders, Brathwaite isn’t worried. He noted that two North American goalies – Canadian-born Corey Crawford with the Chicago Blackhawks and Denver native Ben Bishop of the Tampa Bay Lightning – are playing for the Stanley Cup.

“I believe Canadian goaltending is doing very good,” he said. “But at the end of the day, people are talking about Lundqvist or Pekka Renne. But we have Carey Price. And Braden Holtby had an excellent year.”

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OHL’s Taylor Davis works to join cast of Jersey Boys in National Hockey League

08 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Jeremy Roenick, Johnny Gaurdreau, Ottawa 67's, Patrick Kane, T.R. Goodman, Taylor Davis, Toronto Maple Leafs, Truman Dumel

A bridge that connects Pennsylvania and New Jersey has the slogan “Trenton Makes The World Takes” in huge neon-lit letters posted across its span- a tribute to the Garden State capital’s manufacturing and industrial heritage.

Taylor Davis wants to be Trenton’s next big export, and he’s working far from the shadows of the Lower Trenton Toll Supported Bridge that carries his hometown’s motto in hopes of making his hockey dreams come true.

Hockey has taken Davis from N.J. capital to Canada's (Photo/Valerie Wutti/Blitzenphotography.com)

Hockey has taken Davis from N.J. capital to Canada’s (Photo/Valerie Wutti/Blitzenphotography.com)

Davis first put on a pair of skates at Mercer County’s Ice Land when he was three years old after he watched a hockey game on television and told his mother “Mommy, I want to do that.”

Today, Davis is a 19-year-old defenseman for the Ontario Hockey League’s Ottawa 67’s, and he’s on a mission to join fellow Jersey Boys like Calgary Flames left wing Johnny Gaudreau and Toronto Maple Leafs left wing James van Riemsdyk in the National Hockey League.

“That’s the goal,” Davis said.

Gaudreau was a fourth-round draft pick in 2011. Van Riemsdyk was the second overall pick in the 2007 draft, taken behind Chicago Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane.

While “Johnny Hockey” and JVR burst onto the hockey scene as heralded draft picks, Davis has had to barge his way into the consciousness of the hockey world.

Taylor Davis went from walk-on to defensive standout for the OHL's Ottawa 67's (Photo/Valerie Wutti/Blitzenphotography.com).

Taylor Davis went from walk-on to defensive standout for the OHL’s Ottawa 67’s (Photo/Valerie Wutti/Blitzenphotography.com).

He wasn’t drafted by any Canadian major junior hockey team despite helping Western New York’s Kenmore East High School win the New York State Division II (Small School) championship in 2012 and despite having a solid 2011-12 season with the Buffalo Blades, a Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League team that counts Patrick Kane and former NHLer Todd Marchant among its alums.

Davis joined 67’s basically as a walk-on after being recommended to team officials

Scout Truman Dumel recommended Davis to 67"s.

Scout Truman Dumel recommended Davis to 67″s.

by Truman Dumel, a bird-dog scout who never actually saw Davis play but knew of his hockey pedigree and commitment to the game.

“I kept in touch with their head scout, who was Joe Rowley at the time, and he asks me if I know of any guys,” Dumel recalled. “I go to him, ‘Yeah, I know this kid from New Jersey.'”

Dumel’s recommendation earned Davis an invite to Ottawa’s rookie camp. His performance there garnered an invitation to the 67’s main camp and a roster spot on the team in 2012-13.

He’s been a mainstay on the blue line ever since, though he admits it was a challenge in the beginning of his OHL career.

“I had ups and downs in my first year, going against guys in practice like (Sean)Monahan, who’s in the NHL with the Calgary Flames now,” Davis told me recently. “It was a total shock coming from where you were the man and now you’re a fish in the big sea. It was pretty tough, but it’s been a nice adjustment for me.”

Taylor Davis has skated his way from New Jersey's capital to Canada's capital (Photo/Valerie Wutti/Blitzenphotography.com).

Taylor Davis has skated his way from New Jersey’s capital to Canada’s capital (Photo/Valerie Wutti/Blitzenphotography.com).

Nice indeed. This season, the 5-foot-11, 216-pound Davis has 2 goals and 11 assists in 47 games for the 67’s. He’s turned around a rookie-year plus/minus of minus-10 to a plus-11 this season.

“He has all the talent,” Dumel said. “He’s determined. He knows he has to prove himself, which is what he’s doing. He’s been playing hockey since he was three. He’s trying to go as far as he can.”

Trying to get far in hockey has kept Davis far from home in the off-season. He spent last summer in Venice Beach, California, working out with fitness maven T.R. Goodman,  who’s trained Anaheim Ducks forward Emerson Etem and retired NHL stars Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick, and Alan May.

“He’s very good, definitely knows his stuff,” Davis said of Goodman. “When I was there, Emerson Etem was there. Mike Tyson was there in the mornings and you’d see Lou Ferrigno walking around Gold’s Gym all the time.”

When he wasn’t pumping iron, Davis would chat with actor Ray Liotta, another Jersey Boy and regular at Goodman’s gym.

“Ray Liotta was always in there,” Davis said. “I always talked to him – he’s a really funny guy.”

 

 

 

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From Larry Kwong to Brad Kwong, celebrating hockey’s rich Asian legacy

04 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by William Douglas in Uncategorized

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Atlanta Flames, Boston Bruins, Brad Kwong, Calgary Flames, Canadian Football League, Dubuque Fighting Saints, Harvard University, Larry Kwong, Minnesota Wild, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Norman "Normie" Kwong, USHL

Brad Kwong has gone from the Ivy League to corn country for the love of hockey, adding to the game’s rich Asian history along the way.

Kwong, a defenseman who captained Harvard University’s hockey team in 1984-85, is part of the group that owns the Dubuque Fighting Saints of the United States Hockey League, the top junior league in the country. When Northern Lights, LLC purchased the team in 2009, Kwong became part of a growing number of people of color – many of them Asian – in hockey’s ownership ranks, from the junior leagues to the National Hockey League.

“I have the benefit of having some really good partners that helped me get along in this profession,” Kwong told me recently. “I don’t ever recall an encounter where I was compromised or biased because of my ethnicity. And that might be me just having the blinders on or being naïve to it. But I think this sport in particular, because I lived through it, and in business in general, if you prove that you have a certain acumen, drive, and initiative you can succeed in anything.”

Brad Kwong, center, congratulates on of his team's players (Photo/Dubuque Fighting Saints).

Brad Kwong, center, congratulates on of his team’s players (Photo/Dubuque Fighting Saints).

Harvard crimson and business ties run deep through the Fighting Saints ownership: Kwong,  Phillip Falcone, Northern Lights’s principal owner and part owner of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, and Peter Chiarelli, general manager of the Boston Bruins, played hockey together at Harvard in the 1980s. Mark Falcone, another Northern Lights managing partner and a Minnesota Wild board member, played hockey for the University of Denver hockey player. Phillip Falcone is chief investment officer of Harbinger Capital Partners, a Wall Street private hedge fund, and Kwong is a managing partner in the firm.

“Our experience at Harvard actually changed the courses of our lives,” Kwong said. “We all believed that hockey, most notably college hockey, changed the trajectory  of our lives. So we wanted to give back to the sport and college hockey and obviously the USHL being the primary feeder of players to NCCA Division I hockey was a great platform to do that.”

The 50-year-old Kwong may have good partners assisting him in the hockey business, but he also learned a lesson or two from his dad. Norman “Normie” Kwong was a star running back Canadian Football League’s Calgary Stampeders and the Edmonton Eskimos in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. But he was also part of the ownership group that bought the NHL’s Atlanta Flames and moved the team to Calgary in 1980.

When the Flames won the Stanley Cup in 1989, the elder Kwong became one of the few people whose names are etched on both the CFL’s Grey Cup and the Stanley Cup.

“He, of course, back in the 40s and 50s, experienced the racial stuff,” the younger Kwong said of his father, who also served as lieutenant governor of Alberta from 2005 to 2010. “He always just fought through it, never saw himself as different, and just kind of worked hard and achieved a lot, regardless of his race. He always instilled in my brothers and I to just do your best, work hard, and you’ll achieve the goals you set out for yourself.”

 Kwong, front row, center, was captain of Harvard's 1984-85 hockey team (Photo/Harvard University).

Kwong, front row, center, was captain of Harvard’s 1984-85 hockey team (Photo/Harvard University).

Brad and Norman Kwong aren’t the only family members with hockey ties. Graham Lee, Brad Kwong’s cousin, is owner and governor of the Victoria Royals of the Western Hockey League. Lee’s company, RG Properties, built and operates the 7,000-seat Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, the arena where the Royals play.

Lee and the Kwongs are part of a history of Asian ownership in hockey. The Tampa Bay Lightning began its NHL life under a Japanese ownership group. Shanghai-born and New York-raised Charles Wang, owns the New York Islanders, an NHL franchise that’s currently up for sale. Chicago-based businessman Horn Chen is a minority owner of the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets.

The media-shy Chen once told The Chicago Sun-Times that he became interested in hockey when his son played in a youth tournament in Indianapolis. That interest launched Chen on a team-buying binge: He founded the Central Hockey League and owned the CHL’s Wichita Thunder, Topeka Tarantulas, Oklahoma City Blazers and Mississippi RiverKings. He also owned the International Hockey League’s Indianapolis Ice, the East Coast Hockey League’s Columbus Chill, the CFL’s Ottawa Rough Riders (briefly) and several minor league football, baseball, and basketball teams.

Winnipeg Jets forward Devin Setoguchi.

Winnipeg Jets forward Devin Setoguchi.

Asian-American and Asian-Canadians have had an impact on the ice as well. Forward Paul Kayria, who’s of Japanese descent, was the first hockey player of Asian descent to captain an NHL team when he was awarded the “C’ by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.  Defenseman Jim Paek, who’s of Korean heritage,won two Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1990s. Seoul-born right wing Richard Park enjoyed a long NHL career with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Minnesota Wild, Philadelphia Flyers, Vancouver Canucks and the Islanders.

Asian players currently in the NHL include Winnipeg Jets forward Devin Setoguchi, who’s Japanese-Canadian, and Carolina Hurricanes forward Manny Malhotra, who’s Indo-Canadian.

Hockey has come a long way since Larry Kwong became the first Chinese-Canadian – and some historians argue the first person of color – to play in the NHL when he skated a single one-minute shift for the New York Rangers  in a game against the Montreal Canadiens at the Montreal Forum during the 1947-48 season. A decade later, in 1958, Willie O’Ree became the NHL’s first black player when he skated for the Bruins, ironically, against the Canadiens.

Hockey has come a long way from the days when Larry Kwong, center,  played (Photo/Chad Soon).

Hockey has come a long way from the days when Larry Kwong, center, played (Photo/Chad Soon).

Larry Kwong, who was inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame last September at age 90, isn’t related to Brad Kwong, the two men share a sort of six degrees of separation that causes Brad to chuckle when recalling an episode that happened while he was playing professional hockey in Europe post-Harvard undergrad.

“There was a time in San Moritz, a group of fans came down, said hello, and said they knew my father,” he said. “My father had a reasonable amount of fame in Canada, but I didn’t think it extended to Switzerland. Obviously, it didn’t. They meant Larry, who played hockey in Switzerland at one point in his career. When I was 8-9 years old, he had moved back to Calgary and given that my parents knew him, he offered to teach my older brother and I tennis.”

Brad Kwong believes he’ll have company in the owner’s club in the not-too-distant future as minority players currently in professional hockey get older and transition into the next phase of their careers.

“As the numbers increase you’re going to have more people like me who played the game, who want to stay part of the game, which is my primary motivation, and I would imagine they’d stay involve in some way whether it be coach, general manager, owner, business president, whatever,” he said. “The sport is a fascinating sport. And I think once you’ve been exposed to it, you’re going to get more and more people, regardless of their color, wanting to be a part of it.”

 

 

 

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