Pittsburgh Penguins superstar Sidney Crosby and Colorado Avalanche sniper NathanMacKinnon were traded – to Kenya.
Pittsburgh Penguins forward Sidney Crosby.
Crosby and MacKinnon donned the jerseys of the Kenya Ice Lions and skated with the 12-member team from the African nation in Toronto.
Tim Hortons helped arrange the Lions’ trip to Toronto and surprised the team with visits by Crosby and MacKinnon.
“It is a dream to not only have the chance to play in Canada, but to play – for the first time – in full gear alongside two of the greatest players of the game,” says BenardAzegere, the Ice Lions captain said in a statement about the event. “When we first started playing in Kenya, we didn’t even have full equipment, but now not only do we have that, we can say we’ve played a real game with some All-Star teammates.”
“I was honored to be able to join the Ice Lions as they played their first game against another team,” Crosby said. “One of the things I love about hockey is how it’s able to reach so many people from so many countries around the world and bring them together.”
The Kenyan players skate twice a week at a rink at the Panari Sky Center Hotel in the capital of Nairobi, according to Adweek.There aren’t enough players in the African nation to put a second team on ice, so the Kenyan hadn’t faced another team until their trip to Canada.
In addition to bringing the ice Lions to Canada, Tim Hortons made a donation to Kenya’s youth hockey league to help the sport grow in that country.
“In Canada – and as a company – Hockey is part of our DNA,” Jorge Zaidan, Head of Marketing, Tim Hortons Canada said. “We are so inspired by the story of the Lions. Despite having no other teams to play against, the players on the Kenya Ice Lions’ passion for the game is unwavering. Their shared passion and love of the game knows no borders.”
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Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Trevor Daley devised the plan years ago. All he needed was the Stanley Cup to hatch it.
Daley accomplished that last month when the Penguins defeated the San JoseSharks in the Stanley Cup Final, meaning that his plan for what he’d do on his day with the Cup would finally come to fruition.
Unlike other major league sports, each player on a Stanley Cup-winning team gets to have the championship trophy for a day to do whatever. Phil Pritchard, the Hockey Hall of Fame’s white-gloved Keeper of the Cup, accompanies the trophy on a summer-long journey through Canada, the United States, Russia, wherever a championship player resides.
“I’m going to bring the cup back home to where I grew up and around my neighborhoods that I grew up around playing hockey,” Toronto native Daley told Texas’ SportsDay earlier this month. “I can’t wait. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about that day for a really long time. Now that it’s come true it’s amazing.”
Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Trevor Daley, center, brought a friend with him to a local ice rink – the Stanley Cup (Photo/Phil Pritchard/Hockey Hall of Fame).
Daley took Stanley on a mini whistle-stop tour of sorts during his Cup time that stretched Friday into Saturday. First stop: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where he played major junior hockey for the Sault Ste. MarieGreyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League before the Dallas Stars made him their second round pick in the 2002 NHL Draft.
Then it was on to home town Toronto for some public and private quality time with Lord Stanley’s trophy.
The Penguins’ Stanley Cup victory capped a bittersweet 2015-16 season for Daley. He was traded from the Stars to the Chicago Blackhawks before the season began, then dealt by the Hawks after 29 games to the Penguins.
Sitting on the dock of the bay, Trevor Daley and the Stanley Cup watch the tide roll away (Photo/Phil Pritchard/Hockey Hall of Fame).
He skated with a heavy heart as his mother, Trudy Daley, battled cancer. Her dying wish was to see her son hoist the Cup. Penguins team captain Sidney Crosby made sure that happened, handing Daley the Cup first even though Daley missed the San Jose series because of a broken ankle.
He was all smiles as he skated briefly and gingerly with the 123-year-old, 35-pound trophy that has the names of 2,000 Cup-winning players and coaches inscribed on it.
Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Trevor Daley and son with the Stanley Cup in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. (Photo/Phil Pritchard/Hockey Hall of Fame).
“She was pumped, she was excited,” Daley told SportsDay. “She got to see my son out there on the ice with me too so she was really excited about the whole situation. She said before the game …’It’d be nice if they win this for you tonight so you can come home and see me soon.'”
Trevor Daley and Lord Stanley hanging out at the firehouse on Daley’s day with the Stanley Cup (Photo/Phil Pritchard/Hockey Hall of Fame).
She didn’t live to see her son’s day with the Stanley Cup. But, as part of a plan he devised so long ago, Trevor Daley’s family, friends, and others he encountered along his hockey journey had a chance to bask in Lord Stanley’s silvery glow.
“The day after he won the Stanley Cup, he called me and said ‘the Cup is coming home,’” Ryan Land, who organized a Cup-viewing for Daley at The Spice Route bar in Toronto, told The Toronto Sun. “Two weeks later, he called me with a date and said ‘plan me a Stanley Cup party and here’s what I want to do.”
Trevor Daley introduced the Stanley Cup to his old neighborhood playground (Photo/Phil Pritchard/Hockey Hall of Fame).
When the names of the 2015-16 Penguins players are added to the Cup, Daley will join the small fraternity of black players with their names immortalized on the trophy: goaltender Grant Fuhr (Edmonton Oilers – 1985, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1990), goalie Ray Emery (Chicago Blackhawks – 2013), defenseman Johnny Oduya (Blackhawks – 2013, 2015), wing Dustin Byfuglien (Blackhawks – 2010), and netminder Eldon “Pokey” Reddick(Oilers – 1990).
Trudy Daley got to experience every hockey mom’s dream.
She saw her son, Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Trevor Daley, hoist the Stanley Cup triumphantly over his head after the Penguins defeated the San Jose Sharks 3-1 and won the championship series in six games.
Trevor Daley’s team won the Cup earlier this month. Trudy Daley lost her life last Tuesday at the age of 51, succumbing to cancer.
“Everyone who knew Trudy, knew her big personality and great love for life. She had a sense of humor which was a little warped at times but kept people laughing,” read her obituary posted on Toronto’s McDougall & Brown Funeral Homewebsite. “She was a fierce friend, that always had your back no matter what. She was there when you needed her.”
Trudy Daley (right) holds a photo of her son, defenseman Trevor Daley, from his playing days with the Dallas Stars (Photo/Damon Kwame Mason).
She passed with her dying wish fulfilled, seeing her son carrying the Cup. He didn’t play in the Stanley Cup Final because of an ankle injury.
But he was on the ice in full gear following the Pens’ Game 6 win and was the first playerteam captain Sidney Crosby handed the Cup to after he received it from National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman .
“He had told me that he went and seen his mom in between series and stuff, she wasn’t doing well, she wanted to see him with the Cup. That was important to her,” Crosby said. “I think that kind of stuck with me after he told me that.”
"One of my mom's last images of me being on the ice. It's something Ill never forget." –@Penguins' Trevor Daley on winning last year's Cup. pic.twitter.com/hCwUfzHP5M
The Cup-hoisting moment was as much Trudy’s as it was Trevor’s.
There’s no mom like a hockey mom – a woman who helps tie a young pee wee player’s skates; freezes herself to the bone watching her bantam player practice at midnight; logs hundreds of thousands of miles in the beat-up family car transporting her travel team player; and is a non-judgmental listening post and crying shoulder for the major junior player who aspires to play in the NHL.
Trudy Daley did that and more. She and her son had to navigate issues of race in what’s still a predominantly white sport. She didn’t sugar-coat the evils of racism to her son nor would she allow bigotry to be used as a crutch or obstacle that could prevent him from achieving his career goals.
“What his father and I stressed to him was that we know who your are,” she told author Cecil Harris in his seminal book “Breaking The Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey.” “But when you go out on that street you’re just another black kid. That’s how you’ll be treated. They’ll stereotype you. But think less about what certain people think about you and think more about who you really are.”
She is survived by her husband, Trevor Daley Sr., and their three children, Trevor, Tereen, Nicholas; six grand children, Deja, Trevor, Dekye, Malaya, Emery and Nicky along with her brother and sisters and countless friends.
Hockey has lost a great mom. Rest in peace, Trudy Daley.
Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Trevor Daley didn’t play a minute in the StanleyCup Final series against the San Jose Sharks.
Traded to Pittsburgh by Chicago, Trevor Daley wins the Stanley Cup.
But after National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman gave Penguins captain Sidney Crosby the Cup for vanquishing the Sharks Sunday, Crosby handed the oldest trophy competed for by professional athletes in North America to Daley for a short skate.
Why? Because he earned it.
Crosby’s classy pass was a testament to Daley’s 2015-16 season and a career of perseverance and performance. He endured a season in which he was traded twice, skated with a heavy heart from his mother’s battle with cancer, and suffered a broken left ankle against the Tampa Bay Lightning that knocked him out of the playoffs.
But the moment that he hoisted that 34.5-pound Cup, all of Daley’s physical pain and personal heartache seemed to evaporate, knowing that his ailing mother, Trudy, would see him hold the trophy that they both desperately wanted to win.
“Daley has played such a long time. Hadn’t really even had a chance,” Crosby said following the Penguins’ 3-1 Cup-clinching victory over the Sharks. “He had been through some different playoffs, but getting hurt at the time he did, knowing how important it was, he had told me that he went and seen his mom in between series and stuff, she wasn’t doing well, she wanted to see him with the Cup. That was important to her.”
“I think that kind of stuck with me after he told me that,” Crosby added. “We were motivated to get it for him, even though he had to watch.”
Daley, 32, appreciated the gesture. He told Sportsnet that Crosby is “a great hockey player, but he’s an even better person.”
“What much more can you say about that guy? ” Daley told Sportsnet’sElliotteFriedman. “He’s just as good of a person as he is a hockey player, probably even better. He’s a special guy.”
There are currently 2,476 names inscribed on the Stanley Cup. Five of them belong to black players: goaltenders Grant Fuhr and Eldon “Pokey” Reddick from the EdmontonOilers’ five championships in the 1980s and 90s; goalie Ray Emeryand defensemen Johnny Oduyaand Dustin Byfuglien from the Chicago Blackhawks‘ Cup-winning teams in 2013 and 2015.
Now comes Daley. He started the 2015-16 season with a Stanley Cup run in mind, though not with the Penguins. The Stars traded the veteran defenseman to the defending champion Blackhawks.
But Daley, for some inexplicable reason, wasn’t a good fit in Chicago and the Blackhawks shipped him to Pittsburgh after only 29 regular season games. He quickly meshed with a Penguins offensively talented roster that features Crosby, center Evgeni Malkin and right wing Phil Kessel.
Oh what a night. Trevor Daley (right) savors Stanley Cup victory with actor Cuba Gooding, Jr.(Photo/Phil Pritchard/Hockey Hall of Fame).
Daley tallied 6 goals and 16 assists in 53 regular season games for Pittsburgh and 1 goal and 5 assists in 15 post-season contests before injuring his ankle. He was second among the team’s defensive corps in regular season scoring with 22 points and second in time on ice, averaging 20:27 minutes per game.
Prior to 2015-16, Daley was a mainstay in Dallas, the team that chose him in the second round with the 43rd overall pick of the 2002 NHL Draft. He appeared in 756 games from 2003-04 to 2014-15, ranking him eighth all-time in games played for the franchise.
He played major junior hockey for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario HockeyLeague under head coach and general manager John Vanbiesbrouck, a former NHL All-Star goaltender.
Daley experienced hockey’s hurtful side when he learned that Vanbiesbrouck, a 2007 U.S.Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, had called him the N-word. Daley temporarily left the Greyhounds on the advice of his agent, hockey legend Bobby Orr, and met with OHL Commissioner Dave Branch.
Vanbiesbrouck resigned from the Greyhounds after he admitted using the word, saying “It’s a mistake and consequences have to be paid by me.”
“I told Trev this is an old wound with me,” Vanbiesbrouck told The Sault Star. “I grew up with it. I’m as sorry as anybody that it’s stuck with me.”
Trudy and Trevor Daley, Sr., had prepared their son for such unpleasantness.
“What his father and I stressed to him was that we know who your are,” Trudy told author Cecil Harris for his excellent book “Breaking The Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey.” “But when you go out on that street you’re just another black kid. That’s how you’ll be treated. They’ll stereotype you. But think less about what certain people think about you and think more about who you really are.”
Words that Daley has apparently lived by throughout his professional career. He has a reputation as a class act; a first-on-the-ice, last-off-the-ice, locker room character guy – long-hand hockey lingo for a leader.
When the Stars traded Daley last July, Mike Heika of Texas’ SportsDaycalled him “one of the best guys in the room and he is a very underrated leader.”
The Penguins agreed. When Daley went down with the ankle injury, Penguins Head Coach Mike Sullivan called him “an important player on our team.”
“He’s a hard guy to replace,” the coach said. “He plays a lot of minutes. He plays in key situations…when you lose someone like Trevor that plays important minutes for us, it makes it that much tougher.”
But like Daley, the Penguins persevered and performed. And Daley got to hoist the Stanley Cup for mom.
There was no pressure on New York Islanders rookie goaltender Christopher GibsonTuesday night when he faced the Washington Capitals.
Traded from Toronto on the first day of training camp, Gibson clinches playoff spot for Islanders in first NHL start.
He was only making his first National Hockey League start against superstar sniper Alex Ovechkin and the team with the league’s best regular season record with a Stanley Cup playoff berth on the line.
Gibson showed his mettle, making 29 saves in a 4-3 comeback overtime Islanders victory against Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals in D.C. that secured team’s third playoff spot in four years.
“Right now, it’s the best night of my life so far,” Gibson told NHL Tonight via the highlight show’s arena camera. “I never thought my first game would be against the Washington Capitals. Especially going to OT and winning in overtime, it’s been unbelievable.”
Islanders Head Coach Jack Capuano told reporters that Gibson “gave us a chance to win, and he was our best player tonight.”
Tuesday night’s best player wasn’t on the Islanders roster last Sunday. The team called him up from its American Hockey League farm team, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, because of injuries to goalies Jean-Francois Berubeand Jaroslav Halak.
Gibson, 23, was born in Karkkila, Finland. His mother is Finnish and his father hails from St. Lucia. After playing four seasons playing for the Chicoutimi Sagueneens of the QuebecMajor Junior Hockey League, Gibson was chosen by the Los Angeles Kings with the 49th pick of the NHL Draft in 2011.
But Gibson didn’t sign with the Kings, and ended up signing with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He bounced between the Leafs’ farm teams – the Orlando Solar Bears of the ECHL and Toronto Marlies of the AHL – in the 2013-14 season.
The Leafs traded him to the Islanders on the first day of training camp in September for Michael Grabner and was assigned to Bridgeport where he has a 19-11-3 record and a 2.70 goals-against average.
Tuesday was his first NHL start, but he played in his first NHL game on Jan. 2, 2016, relieving starting Isles goalie Thomas Greissin a tilt against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. He gave up one goal in a 5-2 Penguins victory.
Brent Thompson, Gibson’s head coach in Bridgeport, told the Islanders website reporter Cory Wright that the goaltender is “one of the hardest-working kids both on and off the ice.”
“If there’s an opportunity to get on the ice early, he’s on the ice early, doing extra, we always do extra shooting,” Thompson told Wright. “His conditioning, he takes pride in that. I think you couldn’t ask for a better kid all around. He’s got great character, a great work ethic and it’s really nice to see him get that kind of reward with his first NHL win.”
Predator’s Seth Jones dons red, white, and blue jersey again (Andre Ringuette/HHOF-IIHF Images).
Jones, 20, adds a wealth of international experience to a young U.S. team that’s set to compete in the 16-nation tournament which runs May 1-17 in Ostrava and Prague, Czech Republic.
He’s a three-time IIHF gold medalist, having helped the U.S. to the top prize at the 2011 and 2012 IIHF Under-18 World Championships and the 2013 World Junior Championship.
Jones, son of former National Basketball Association star Popeye Jones, also skated for Team U.S.A. in the 2014 IIHF World Championship and made the tournament’s All-Star team. He was also named best defenseman by the tournament’s directorate.
The U.S. team begins its 2015 quest for the gold May 1 against Finland, a game in which Jones could face goaltender Pekka Rinne, a Nashville teammate. Rinne was the 2014 tournament’s Most Valuable Player.
The 2015 U.S.A.-Finland game will be aired live on cable’s NBCSN at 10 a.m. All of the American squad’s games will be live-streamed for mobile devices, desktops and tablets via NBC Sports Live Extra.
The fourth player taken in the 2013 NHL Draft, Jones appeared in all 82 games for the Predators during the 2014-15 regular season. He tallied eight goals and 19 assists and had a plus/minus of plus-3.
He played in all six of the Pred’s first-round playoff games against the ChicagoBlackhawks. He had no goals, four assists and was a minus-6. The Blackhawks eliminated the Predators four games to two.
But rather than go home to Plano, Texas, at the end of his National Hockey League season, Jones decided to head to the Czech Republic. He joins other NHLers who are skating for their countries after their teams either failed to qualify for the playoffs or were eliminated in the first round.
Team Canada features an all-NHL roster that includes forwards Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Claude Giroux of the Philadelphia Flyers and Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche.
The U.S. roster is a mix of NHLers, American Hockey League players, and NCAA Division I college players including Boston University forward Jack Eichel, likely to be taken by the Buffalo Sabres with the second pick in the 2015 NHL Draft June 26-27.
NHL players joining Jones on the American squad includes forward Nick Bonino of the Vancouver Canucks, defenseman Torey Krug of the Boston Bruins, and defenseman Justin Faulk of the Carolina Hurricanes.
Yo, Philadelphia, if you see Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds wearing a Toronto BlueJays baseball cap, cut him some slack.
Sure, that blue lid with the bird head and red maple leaf on it brings back bad flashbacks of Toronto’s Joe Carter smashing a Mitch Williams fastball into SkyDome’s left field bullpen for a ninth-inning, walk-off three-run homer in Game 6 of the 1993World Series and announcer Tom Cheek screaming “Touch ’em all Joe” as your Philadelphia Phillies dejectedly trudge off the field.
But for Simmonds, the Blue Jays brim brings back a different memory – of his Nana, grandmother Catherine Mercury. He tells a touching first-person story on SI.com as part of the National Hockey League’s Hockey Fights Cancer initiative.
Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds fights cancer for his late grandmother.
Simmonds’ involvement in the campaign reflects his stature as one of the NHL’s rising stars, a trajectory that began last season when he led the Flyers with 29 goals. Kick in 31 assists, and Simmonds finished third on the team in scoring in 2013-14 with 60 points. He’s scored seven goals and five assists for 12 points in 16 games so far in the 2014-15 season.
Since coming to the Flyers in a 2011 trade from the Los Angeles Kings, Simmonds has become a fan favorite for his scoring and physical play. Nothing says love more in Philadelphia than notching two Gordie Howe hat tricks – a goal, an assist, and a fight – in one season, which Simmonds accomplished in 2013.
But for Simmonds, nothing says love more than wearing a Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap.
Cyril Bollers, president and coach of Skillz Hockey, has been named an assistant coach for Ontario’s Under-16 hockey team that will compete in the 2015 CanadaWinter Games.
Cyril Bollers will help map X’s and O’s for Team Ontario at 2015 Canada Winter Games.
Bollers will help Team Ontario Head Coach Drew Bannister,an assistant coach for the Ontario HockeyLeague’s OwenSound Attack, guide a squad of some the province’s best hockey players under 16 years of age at the Winter Games, which are held every four years. David Schlitt, head coach of the Huron-Perth Lakers Minor Midget team, rounds out the Ontario hockey coaching staff.
The 19-event sport festival will be held Feb. 13-March 1, 2015 in Prince George, British Columbia. The games have been a showcase for some of Canada’s best athletes including Pittsburgh Penguins forward Sidney Crosby, Tampa Bay Lightning forward Steven Stamkos, and Canadian women’s hockey Olympic Gold Medalist Haley Wickenheiser.
“This is wonderful. It’s an honor and a privilege to have the opportunity to have been selected,” Bollers said. “I’m just going to go out, try my best and make Ontario proud.”
Bollers is president and head coach of Skillz Hockey and associate coach of the MarkhamMajors Minor Midget AAA team in the Toronto area. He is one of the few coaches of color in organized hockey.
There currently are only two minority head coaches in the NHL – Philadelphia Flyers’CraigBerube and Buffalo SabresTed Nolan, who are both First Nations. Paul Jerrard, who is black, served as an assistant coach for the NHL Dallas Stars last season. He’s an assistant coach this season for the American Hockey League’sUtica Comets, a Vancouver Canucks farm team. Darren Lowe, who is black, coaches the University of Toronto Varsity Blues men’s hockey team.
Bollers hopes to join their ranks in the not-to-distant future.
Bollers hopes that he and the kids he’s coached rise in pro hockey.
“After all the years of all the hard work, this is the opportunity that I was looking for,” Bollers said of the Canadian Winter Games appointment. “Once you get this opportunity you have to make the best of it and it could lead to other things.”
Between Markham and his Skillz Black Aces and Black Mafia teams, Bollers has coached a stable of players – minority and white – who’ve gone on to successful major junior hockey careers and positioned themselves to become NHL players.
Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds defenseman Darnell Nurse, the Edmonton Oilers first-round draft pick last summer, Kitchener Rangers forward Justin Bailey, a Buffalo Sabres 2013 second-round pick, and Bellville Bulls defenseman JordanSubban, the Vancouver Canucks’ 2013 fourth-round pick and brother of MontrealCanadiens defenseman P.K. Subban, all played under Bollers.
And more of Bollers’ former players are expected to chosen in the 2014 NHL Draft in Philadelphia this summer. Josh Ho-Sang, a forward for the OHL’s WindsorSpitfires was listed as the 18th best North American skater in the NHL’s mid-term draft rankings last January; Brendan Lemieux, a forward for the OHL’s Barrie Colts and son of retired NHL player Claude Lemieux, was ranked 38th; KeeganIverson, a forward for the Western Hockey League’sPortland Winterhawks, was ranked 64th; Owen Sound Attack forward Jaden Lindo was ranked 96th; and Colts forward Cordell James placed 126th on the NHL list.
