Sweden, Finland, Russia and the Czechs got together in Sweden this weekend to play a friendly U20 tournament against each other. These teams often play against each other throughout the season to prepare for the World Juniors. None of the teams brought their top squad into the tournament as this one is meant more [...]
‘ Pori Ässät team in the Finnish Liiga promoted today’s preseason game as “Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s final game in Pori for now”. They even arranged a Kotkaniemi fan meeting after the game where he signed autographs for his fans. In the actual game, Kotkaniemi was used as the number one center for his team. Ässät scored [...]
It’s difficult to put a figure on the number of times I’ve been asked to rank my top 10 fantasy prospects heading into the 2018-19 campaign. It has to be well into the triply-digits. Mittelstadt or Pettersson? Tolvanen or Svechnikov? What about Rasmus Dahlin? Filip Zadina? Martin Nečas? “Who the hell do [...]
Well well well, look who came back to my ramblings. Welcome, let’s discuss some recent news, notes, and signings ********* Just before the draft (April 30, 2018) it was reported that Denisenko had two years left on his contract: {source}<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Grigori Denisenko told me 'almost every' NHL team [...]
‘ Before I start, just a reminder that all the summer series articles can be found from here: 31-in-31 series. It’s August now but that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop – quite the opposite in fact. In August, we have another 31-in-31 series where we review the entire prospect system of the organization: graduating [...]
Western Canada is the hockey hub for 2019. The World Junior Summer Showcase kicks off in Kamloops, BC tomorrow and runs until August 4th. Normally this event is held in Plymouth, Michigan but I guess they figured why not shake things up. Just two days later, the Ivan Hlinka Gretzky Cup [...]
Welcome back to Thursday ramblings. Are you excited, I am. Make sure you keep checking out the 31-in-31 series FYI my Capitals one is coming out on the 30th so big time watch for that as I am nice. ******************************* I figure I will do another episode of my super [...]
‘ We haven’t been publishing prospect ramblings during the month of July all that often because so much of our time has been used on the 31-in-31 series – remember to check them out on a daily basis. But I had a little bit of free time, so I figured I’d share the results of [...]
*** With most of the free agency shuffle complete for the summer, we can finally do what I do every summer prior to fantasy drafts - figure out where the spots actually are for rookies to make an impact. For this article, I'm going to stick to forwards. Kids in the AHL can always [...]
On a personal note, it’s been something of a whirlwind these past three weeks for me. At the completion of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft, I flew home to join my wife in packing, selling and moving all the possessions we’ve accumulated over the last near-decade. Some boxes went on a buddy’s truck [...]
