On the day he was born three months premature, August 16, 2006, my son Sam was barely bigger than my hand. I spent much of that day on my knees at the Royal Alexandra Hospital praying he’d survive. I’ve told the story of that day, and how my wife Analyn and I got to it…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – whether you’re a fan or a media person, the surest way to look like a fool is to try to predict point totals for NHL players in any given season. Most of us are really bad at it, no matter what “system” we use as…
Four or five years from now, many of the top prospects we’re seeing at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in Edmonton this week will make up the next wave of young stars in the NHL. Before they get there, before they even get drafted this coming June, we get a glimpse them all in one place…
The Rimouski Oceanic of the QMJHL have already produced great players in Sidney Crosby and Vincent Lecavalier. A lot of people who are more in the know than I think we might be seeing the next one at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in Edmonton this week in the form of Team Canada captain Alexis Lafreniere.
When it comes to making the best of what started out as an unquestionably bad trade, it doesn’t get much better than 23 years ago today when the Edmonton Oilers rid themselves of Shayne Corson and ended up with Curtis Joseph and a prospect named Mike Grier in a tidy bit of business with the…
There will be more than one local boy which makes for a good storyline for fans and scouts to follow with Team Canada when the puck drops for the 2018 Hlinka Gretzky Cup at Rogers Place in Edmonton and Servus Arena in Red Deer Monday.
“At first, it seems like he’s living the life of Riley. Joe Murphy works as a laborer, when he needs money, and he sleeps in a tent in a farmer’s field, when he needs shelter.” When I read the first paragraph of a July 7 story written by Mike Aiken on Sunday, I blinked in…
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but when it comes to the NHL, the next best thing to actually being in the rink for me growing up was listening to the game on the radio, not watching it on TV. From the time the Vancouver Canucks entered the NHL in 1970 when I was 12 years…
Ray Whitney could have been one of the best local-boy-makes-good stories of his generation when he showed up on the doorstep of the Edmonton Oilers as a free agent in the late-1990s. Instead, the undersized kid from Fort Saskatchewan, a former stick boy with the Oilers whose dad Floyd was a city cop and a…
It’s absolutely no surprise that former Edmonton Oilers’ winger Mike Grier landed a job as a coach in the NHL, joining the New Jersey Devils as an assistant this week. If anything, the surprise is it took the big winger from Detroit this long to end up behind the bench after retiring at the end…
The way I see it, there’s no way the Edmonton Oilers have room for more than one rookie defenceman on their roster this coming season. If there is one, I’d be willing to bet his initials are E.B. The question is, will it be Ethan Bear or Evan Bouchard? We obviously don’t have that answer…
Patience is a virtue when it comes to waiting on prospects to develop. History tells us that’s especially true – the reality is it’s much easier to talk about than to actually put into practice — when it comes to bringing along young defencemen looking to establish themselves in the NHL. It’s been no different…
