Scratch status not indicative of standing: Lefebvre
Clearing out the notebook from the first few days from the St. John’s Ice Caps’ training camp in Corner Brook …
For exhibition games, like those the Ice Caps are playing against the Toronto Marlies in the Colemans Cup, you can read some things into the lineups … and the scratches.
It’s the time of year when being a healthy scratch is not necessarily a bad thing. It often indicates the player is a roster lock, as was the case in Thursday night’s series-opener at the Stephenville Dome, when forwards Daniel Carr, Gabriel Dumont, Christian Thomas and Bud Holloway, along with Darren Dietz, didn’t play.
All five dressed as St. John’s looked to tie up the series with a win Friday night at the Corner Brook Civic Centre and head coach Sylvain Lefebvre says he is expecting intensity from all, no matter their perceived status.
“Everybody is fighting for something,” said Lefebvre. “It could be a contract. It could be for a spot on the roster. It could be for a spot on a line. It could be a spot on the power play or on the penalty kill. “Everybody is playing for something.”
If there has been a featured forward for St. John’s through the first couple of exhibition games, it has been rookie centre Michael McCarron, who was between fellow first-round draft pick Nikita Scherbak and tryout Markus Eisenschmid on Thursday, then Carr and Thomas on Friday, when Scherbak was among the scratches.
Maybe Marlies
With about 40 players remaining in the training camp of the NHL’s Maple Leafs, the majority of those who will be with the 201516 Marlies are not in Newfoundland for the Coleman’s Cup.
Of the 20 players who suited up for the Marlies Thursday night in Stephenville, only seven played for the team last season, and of them, centre Patrick Watling (who scored the winning goal Thursday) played the most for AHL Toronto, with 29 games.
Of these Marlies, perhaps the best known — at least in the parts — are St. John’s-born defenceman Zach Bell, who was in the IceCaps’ camp a couple of years ago, and burly 34-year-old forward Justin Johnson, who played two games with the New York Islanders in 2013–14. The six-footone Johnson got some press for his NHL debut as a 32-year-old rookie, when he fought and dropped Buffalo’s six-foot-eight John Scott.
Still, despite the Marlies’ lineup here being filled with tryouts and players with mostly ECHL backgrounds, there must be some significant organizational interest given that Maple Leafs assistant general manager Kyle Dubas travelled to Newfoundland to take in the exhibition games.
Assistant GM, goalie coach,
translator?
Some players in the St. John’s dressing room were surprised when IceCaps’ assistant general manager and goaltending coach Vincent Riendeau began to speak to the Moscow-born Scherbak in Russian.
Perhaps they didn’t know Riendeau, a former NHL netminder, was the first Canadian to play in Russia’s top hockey league when he joined Toylatti Lada in 1999.
Besides a bit of Russian, Riendeau can also speak some German. He spent the last decade as a goaltending coach for a number of teams in the German Elite League.
West-coast sellouts
Friday’s game at the Corner Brook Civic Centre was a sell-out, said to be the first full house for a hockey game at the 3,100-seat facility since the 2007 Herder Trophy provincial senior final between the C.B.N. CeeBees and Deer Lake Red Wings.
It was a packed building Thursday night at the Stephenville Dome, too. There are about 1,250 seats in that rink, but when standing room attendees were included, Thursday’s crowd was between 1,600 and 1,700.
Owens is a Maverick
Most ECHL teams revealed training-camp rosters Friday, and the Missouri Mavericks’ includes St. John’s native and defenceman Chris Owens.
The 26-year-old Owens, who was in training camp with the IceCaps last year, played a dozen games for the Independence, Mo.based Mavericks last season after ending his collegiate career at Acadia University.
The Mavericks are affiliated with the NHL’s New York Islanders and AHL’s Bridgeport Sound Tigers.