Signing and expanding the Grizzlies affiliation with the Calgary Flames organization was definitely the top priority of the offseason for Head Coach Kevin Colley who last year found a great partner and mentor in Flames Director of Player Personnel Duane Sutter.

While last year’s affiliation was partial, this upcoming season Utah and Calgary will be each other’s lone NHL and ECHL affiliates respectively. Utah will no longer partner with the New York Islanders while Calgary’s partial affiliation with Victoria has been transferred to West Valley City.

Utah and Calgary partnered late in the offseason last year after the Flames pulled out of Las Vegas. Meanwhile Utah was happy to add an NHL affiliate closer to home for a variety of hockey and business reasons. Last year’s relationship went extremely well transpiring into Thursday’s announcement.

With the Calgary signing of goaltender and former Utah rival J.P Lamoureux this past week, don’t think that Kevin Colley didn’t have the ear of Calgary as he gave his full ringing endorsement of the ex-Alaska workhorse who may be the most dominating goaltender that we have seen playing against Utah the last 16 seasons period.

Grizzlies Assistant Coach Pat Curcio has a new home. He will be an Assistant Coach on the staff of the Soo Greyhounds in the Ontario Hockey League.  Though I am sure we will still see and hear our fair share of the “Curdog” and his contagious laugh here visiting Utah in the offseason. Pat is a fantastic person and has a definite passion for the game of hockey and the people in it.  Grizzlies fans should bookmark SooGreyHounds.com to cheer Curcio on as he takes the next step in his coaching career.

A bit of a firestorm in Victoria this weekend surrounded the abrupt and unhappy divorce between the Salmon Kings and Wes Goldie. Goldie, who scored 40 goals each of the last four years is in the process of leaving the rock and now is the most prized free agent in the ECHL. Goldie leaves as his captain “C” is being given to newcomer Peter Vandermeer who spent the last month or so of the year in Utah.

AJ Perry, known in the locker room as “Juice” has signed a one-way AHL contract with Syracuse joining the Anaheim organization that his brother Corey has starred with for the last five seasons.

After about six weeks without a Head Coach, the Idaho Steelheads will officially name their new Head Coach Tuesday.

GO GRIZZLIES!!!

Three months from today at this time, the Grizzlies will be at morning skate in Anchorage as they get ready to play the second game of the season against the Aces.

Speaking of Alaska, the Grizzlies and the rest of the National Conference received word Thursday that the Aces host hotel will be back in downtown Anchorage and five minutes from the Sullivan Arena after a season about 20 minutes away by the city’s airport. That news was received well as downtown Anchorage is fantastically sprinkled with good restaurants, like Humpy’s, and a large mall. One thing about being on the road in the ECHL with limited per diem, is that cab fare adds up quickly if a hotel is out in the middle of nowhere. Hello Stockton. 

No former Grizzlies found themselves on the NHL transaction wire in the last seven days as free agency entered its third week after a busy first two weeks of former Utah player comings and goings.

The Grizzlies affiliation situation for 2010-2011 has been finalized. An official announcement will come in the next couple of weeks.

The Calgary Flames, who Utah had a positive partial affiliation with in 2009-2010, recently added some depth to their front office by naming former Tampa Bay General Manager Jay Feaster as their Assistant General Manager. Feaster has a unique resume, which included working his way to the NHL from the AHL as the former President of the Hershey Bears. Ironically, he put together the team that beat his new boss and then Head Coach/General Manager Darryl Sutter to win the 2004 Stanley Cup Championship over Calgary in seven games. I personally will miss hearing Feaster weekly on NHL Live, which airs during the season on NHL Network and XM Radio Channel 204, as he was always very insightful and had a great personality.


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So it’s recruiting season, but what does that entail exactly for the General Manager which in Utah’s case is Head Coach and Director of Hockey Operations Kevin Colley?

On July 1, after teams issued qualifying offers, the ECHL sent a list of ECHL free agents and their agents to every team. That is step one of beginning to contact agents and ECHL players from last year in the beginning of building next year’s team. But with the ECHL being a developmental league, many impact players every year are rookies. So in addition, Colley scours the list of players who got a head start on their professional careers last year following college or juniors. The Utah coach has a sheet from www.hockeydb.com  from every player that played in the AHL late last year on Amateur Tryout Agreements.  That can be a great starting point for finding a player who might not be quite ready for the AHL yet and could use a solid beginning in the ECHL. For example, Vic Bartley played ten games with Providence at the conclusion of the 2008-2009 season before starting last year in Utah and going to the AHL for good on December 9. Colley is also finalizing next year’s affiliation situation and transferring information which could result in players getting two-way (AHL/ECHL) or three-way (NHL/AHL/ECHL) contacts. And finally, there are resources which highlight top players from juniors and colleges from last year. Again, Utah is not starting from scratch, seven qualifying offers were issued July 1 and other players have been signed, though immigration for Canadians sometimes delays official announcements.

It sounds like former Utah Assistant Coach Chuck Weber might finally get an AHL Head Coaching job. C-Web doesn’t beat around the bush in this article on his career goals and Rochester sounds like a definitely possibility. Good Luck Chuck!



Former Utah players signing NHL contracts this week include:

David Leneveu with Columbus

Trevor Smith with Anaheim

Jason Bacashihua with Colorado
 
Warren Peters with Minnesota on a two-year deal

Zenon Konopka with the Islanders on a two-year deal

Nathan Lawson with the Islanders

GO GRIZZLIES!!!

Hey everyone, how’s it going?

Adrian asked if I would fill you all in on how my summer has been so far, so here it goes…

Lots of traveling…

A couple weeks after the season ended I went on my first cruise ever. This was a six-day cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida that took us to: Key West, Jamaica and Grand Cayman. The trip was great, the weather was nice and the food was unreal. I recommend it to anyone interested in a vacation; if you haven’t cruised, try it!

The first weekend in June, me and 11 of my buddies that I went to school with and played hockey with in college at Quinnipiac had our 1st annual ‘Man Weekend’. This year’s festivities were held in Fort Myers, Florida. Again, the weather was nice, and the times were good. Next year’s weekend festivities will be held in Minnesota, should be good.

As you can see I’ve been enjoying my summer. I’ve spent time between my home in Minnesota, and Connecticut where I went to school. I enjoy hitting the links when I get a chance. So far, amongst many rounds, I’ve participated in three scramble tournaments, all out in Connecticut: (Quinnipiac Round Ball. Uconn Hockey Scramble. Traditions Shootout.) I am currently in Minnesota training and skating, preparing for next season. I have also spent some time up in northern Minnesota at my family’s cabin on Big Birch Lake. Whether it be up there or down in the cities, I love being on the water, fishing if I can, enjoying the beautiful Minnesota summer.

So far, those are the highlights of my summer this year. I look forward to the beginning of the 2010-2011 season! Hope everyone had a fun fourth of July!

With seven Utah 2010-2011 qualifying offers going to be announced on Friday, today, we greet you with a  Thursday blog to spread out the website content a bit.

A couple of former Grizzlies were traded to Canada in the past week with former Utah goaltender Dan Ellis' rights being shipped to Montreal (he has since signed with Tampa Bay) in wake of the Jaroslav Halak departure. And once again, Keith Ballard has been dealt on a draft day, he is going to Vancouver.

The ECHL’s newest team has a name. The Greenville, South Carolina organization will be known as the Greenville Road Warriors. I’m not a big fan of the name and it sounds like a traveling motorcycle gang that performs music regularly in dive bars. And given what I know having served five years in this league, things are pretty psychological and sometimes it’s beyond ridiculous. I bet this team, with the name Road Warriors, wins more games on the road than at home on a regular basis.

NHL free agency of course opened today. There’s a couple of top goaltenders on the market as teams like Philadelphia, Chicago, Colorado and Nashville have proven it doesn’t take a top salaried goaltender to be successful. Many teams are expected to explore that route, including the San Jose Sharks who have advanced no further than the conference finals with Evgeni Nabakov. Of course, more ECHL signees are expected to come after tomorrow as well. The qualifying offers are usually the start of the movement.

The longer the Idaho Steelheads go without a Head Coach, the better for the rest of the ECHL, as they still search for a replacement for Derek Laxdal. While Laxdal I am sure has left a nice foundation, recruiting time is being lost by not having a Head Coach as in the ECHL the Presidents and CEOs are typically business people as opposed to hockey people and usually leave the GM duties to their Head Coach. When Jason Christie left for the AHL two summers ago, it took the Grizzlies organization less than 24 hours to tab Assistant Coach Kevin Colley as his replacement, thus no time and momentum was lost. However as we have discussed before, more and more teams are cutting Assistant Coaches to save costs and don’t have an internal well to draw from when their Head Coach leaves.

And finally, if you're getting a a bigger hankering for hockey each time a World Cup game comes on television, here is my Happy 4th of July present for you. Click here to watch.


Qualifying offers Friday, July 2 will be announced at 9:30 a.m. Mountain Time.

GO GRIZZLIES!!!

The busiest week of hockey since the Stanley Cup is wrapping up with the NHL Awards Ceremony taking place Wednesday night in Las Vegas and the NHL Draft beginning Friday night from Staples Center in Los Angeles where Grizzlies Head Coach Kevin Colley is currently lodged along with the rest of the hockey world. Not to mention, that on Tuesday, the NHL released the 2010-2011 schedule.

News from the ECHL’s Board of Governors meetings last week includes for the first time in a while, some stability in the Las Vegas Wranglers organization and new ownership that will keep the team at the Orleans Arena.  That group owns a very successful minor league baseball team in Lake Elsinore, California. Last year, while assisting a fellow Elmore Sports Group team in the Inland Empire, I was able to visit their ballpark and they did a tremendous job in their game presentation. That’s good news for the Wranglers who feature one of the top cities and venues in America for minor league hockey.

The other news includes the renaming of the National Conference to the Western Conference and the American Conference to the Eastern Conference. The Grizzlies division with Alaska, Idaho and Victoria will be known as the Mountain Division, narrowly beating out my suggestion to call it the Mormon Trail Division.

And finally, it was announced earlier this week that the ECHL will have a team in suburban Chicago starting in 2011-2012.

I got an email from former Utah defenseman Mark Lutz this week. He is currently working in banking in Boston and was interested to know that former Utah defenseman and Assistant Coach Jeff Dwyer is also currently based in Beantown.

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There was an execution by firing squad, the University of Utah announced it was moving from the Mountain West Conference to the PAC 10, Chevron did their BP impersonation in Red Butte Creek and Jerry Seinfeld performed in Salt Lake while Steve Martin strummed on his banjo. Hopefully you were enticed by one of these, because in the world of hockey not a whole lot of news occurred as far as the Utah Grizzlies are concerned in the past seven days.

However up north in Idaho, it appears nearly official that the Grizzlies closest regional rival will officially begin their search for a new Head Coach with Derek Laxdal apparently off to the WHL. ECHL teams, many of whom over the last few years have eliminated the position of their Assistant Coach to save money, may start to see one of the negatives to that when they have to start from scratch to replace a Head Coach. The Steelheads though have never had an Assistant Coach and nothing has been reported in terms of candidates who might be mentioned to succeed Laxdal. I honestly don’t have any idea either on where that operation will begin to look to replace him.

Another former Utah Grizzlies player has been named Head Coach of an NHL team. Longtime New Jersey Devil John Maclean, who also spent time playing with San Jose, the Rangers and Dallas; was named Head Coach of the New Jersey Devils earlier this week. He played five games with Utah during the 2001-2002 season.

The ECHL’s Board of Governors held their summer meetings in Las Vegas this week. These are the meetings where it usually is voted on to change playoff formats, division alignment, vote on new member teams, etc. While it is not my position to discuss or report on any of this before the league announces the results of the meetings, I think it is safe to say that there won’t be any real breaking news.

While in Las Vegas this week, the easily most recognizable face at the ECHL meetings was former New York Rangers General Manager Neil Smith who is the owner of the ECHL’s Greenville team that will begin play in October after moving from Johnstown.

And finally it always could be worse right? I have found something more loud and obnoxious than the constant ring of cowbells at Anchorage’s Sullivan Arena. If you’ve watched the World Cup, which I won’t, you know what I mean.


GO GRIZZLIES!!!

The offseason is starting to shift into gear as far as the Utah Grizzlies are concerned. In the last week, the team selected seven 2009-2010 players to issue qualifying offers to on July 1st. In addition, a few more will receive standard player contracts on July 2nd. From that point on, player signing announcements will begin to be announced. And finally, one player’s rights will go to the Florida Everblades to complete the February 1 trade that sent Steve McJannet to Utah.

One of the most influencing coaches that Kevin Colley played for in his career won a Stanley Cup Wednesday night in Chicago Assistant Mike Haviland. Haviland coached his captain Kevin Colley to the 2003 Kelly Cup in Atlantic City. Haviland was mentioned for a couple of NHL coaching vacancies last year and will likely get his chance this year joining Philadelphia Head Coach Peter Laviolette, the Blues and former Alaska Coach Davis Payne, Washington’s Bruce Boudreau and Islanders Head Coach Scott Gordon as former ECHL coaches running their own NHL benches.

A former Grizzlies player was named an NHL Head Coach earlier this week when Scott Arniel, who won a championship here in 1995-96 was named Head Coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. He becomes the first former Grizzlies player to become an NHL Head Coach. Rob Zettler could be the next. He remains an Assistant Coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs and has been an NHL assistant under Ron Wilson since 2002.

It’s not often that we give you two “Separated at Birth” features in one week, but this is too hard to resist. The New Jersey Devils announced Thursday that they will be moving their AHL affiliate from Lowell, Massachusetts to Albany, New York and unveiled this logo. A logo that looks eerily similar to the broken nose suffered by the Suns’ Steve Nash earlier this spring during the NBA playoffs.



GO GRIZZLIES!!

Now into June, action and news will begin to heat up again. The NHL draft will take place in Los Angeles later this month which will also put all hockey decision makers in one point after a little bit of a lull from the end of their respective seasons until then.

From an ECHL standpoint, right now the only movement is in the coaching department. Mark Morrison and Marty Raymond have been renewed and extended in Bakersfield and Victoria, while everyone is still waiting to see where Idaho’s Derek Laxdal ends up. Beyond that, after it looked like Raymond and Morrison were also mentioned for AHL Head Coach or Assistant Coaching jobs and might be moving up, they will be staying. And right now, it looks like the National Conference coaching scene will remain pretty stable. That means the balance of power likely stays the same unless one of the eight coaches takes a little extra vacation and lags on the recruiting which has happened before. That will not be the case with Kevin Colley who again is in the office over eight hours a day during his slowest time of the year and plans the same schedule all summer. To refresh your memory on the ECHL’s National Conference balance of power, spots two-eight, finished the year nine points apart. The only wild card right now is if former Elmira Coach Steve Martinson has something brewing with a National Conference team after not having his contract renewed by the Jackals this week. Interpreting this media piece, it sounds like Martinson already has another ECHL Head Coaching job already lined up, so my guess is it’s 50/50 whether he ends up out west or back in the American Conference.

Earlier this week an apparent merger was announced between the CHL and the IHL which to me says the ECHL figuratively passed on the chance to add Fort Wayne, Bloomington, Port Huron, Dayton, Quad City and Flint after last year adding Kalamazoo from the International Hockey League. Even though adding those teams would have made more geographic sense than the CHL. But when has geography ever had anything to do with planning in minor league hockey dating back to the 1980s and before.

Lance Galbraith checked in over the weekend to express his sadness following the death of Gary Coleman last Friday. Galbraith made a personal visit to Coleman as he waited in the green room to drop the ceremonial first puck on February 1, 2010 before Utah’s 4-1 win over Las Vegas.

All five games of the ECHL’s Kelly Cup Finals were decided by one goal as has been the case with the Stanley Cup Finals thus far. The AHL, which is always the last hockey league to finish as to I assume not compete directly with the Stanley Cup Finals opened Thursday night
continuing the one-goal trend as Texas beat Hershey 2-1.

GO GRIZZLIES!!!

The Utah Grizzlies were the first ECHL team to release the 2010-2011 schedule Thursday and Grizzlies fans will see the most of Las Vegas, Stockton and Ontario who will all make seven visits to West Valley City in 2010-2011.

Like in 2009-2010, the Grizzlies will also become part time residents of Boise with nine games spanning four trips to downtown and the Qwest Arena. It almost became laughable constantly walking by Angela and Nancy, the two evening lobby bartenders, and Megan the main concierge at the Grove Hotel which is attached to the arena this season; we were there so much. They probably thought that 25 businessmen from Utah were given a weekly rate there from November-April and were using the place as an apartment. The Grizzlies went to Boise six times in six months this past season and knew everyone at that hotel by first name.

Utah will somehow avoid the dirty snow and nearly impassable roads which makeup a dark Anchorage winter by visiting there in October and April only, their first and last road trips of the year.

November 24-28, the Grizzlies will get to know California’s Highway 99, which leads from Los Angeles, to Stockton and holiday traffic as they visit Bakersfield, Stockton, Bakersfield and Ontario to play four games in five nights the week of Thanksgiving. The trip will feature two rides through now defunct ECHL market Fresno. It always feels so lonely and somber driving through a former hockey city. I remember the same feeling being in San Diego last summer. This will be the first time in six seasons that the Grizzlies will be on the road for the American Thanksgiving.

Trevor at the Coast Harbourside Hotel in Victoria is hoping his favorite player Vlady Nikiforov will be there February 25, 26 and March 16,18,19 as Utah goes to Canada on two consecutive road trips.

The Las Vegas Wranglers annual midnight game will preempt 1320 KFAN’s Fox Sports Radio overnight show JT The Brick on December 27 as the Grizzlies will play a game that will begin at 12:59 a.m. Hopefully there is a Jazz game that night so KFAN can have a Monday night doubleheader which will last till approximately 4 a.m.

Enjoy your holiday weekend, opening night is less than five months away.

GO GRIZZLIES!!!