EX-VANCOUVER GIANT CHASES HIS DREAM IN RUSSIA
KONTINENTAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Former Vancouver Giant thriving
What Jon Blum is up to now doesn’t truly register until he sends you the pictures. There’s Blum in a jersey you aren’t familiar with. There’s Blum and wife Emilie in their winter finery, including hats proclaiming an allstar game in Moscow. There they are again, this time outside among classic Russian architecture.
And then it’s the two of them overlooking a futuristic-looking, cable-stayed bridge. A quick check of Google says that it’s the Zolotoy Bridge, in Vladivostok, Russia, which is a port city near the border with China. It’s as east as Russia gets.
Blum, 27, is one of the North American players trying to make a go of it in the Kontinental Hockey League. The former Vancouver Giants mainstay, a member of that 2007 Memorial Cup national junior championship team, is in his first season with Admiral Vladivostok, a squad that includes one-time Vancouver Canucks winger David Booth.
Blum made the jump this season after he couldn’t come to terms on a deal as a restricted free agent with the Minnesota Wild.
Blum was a first-round pick, 23rd overall by the Nashville Predators in 2007. Nashville didn’t tender him a qualifying offer following the 201213 season and he signed with the Wild as a free agent, although there was some talk that the Canucks were interested at the time.
“When we started to talk about Russia, I thought I was two years away from playing over here,” Blum explained in an email interview this week,“but when Minnesota was low balling me hard, there wasn’t much I could do. I decided to do what was best for my career and head to the second best league in the world and not be buried in the minors.
“Now that I look back, it was the best choice I’ve made so far in my pro hockey career.”
Blum has eight goals and 22 assists in 53 games, to go with a plus-11 rating and 43 penalty minutes.
Blum’s squad had two games left in the regular season. They’re fifth in the Eastern Conference, sitting at 32-22-1-3. The top eight teams make the playoffs.