Prospects injury update

There are several prospects with some health issues this year. Here's a general update that touches on several.

Grant Lewis returned to the Chicago Wolves line-up tonight, following a concussion. Director of Amateur Scouting and Player Development Dan Marr said that this was the second incident of someone laying him out this year, and that he's going to learn about the league after this -- when you have the puck this is what happens. Lewis was cleared to skate last weekend, so he made a quick return following that directive.

Boris Valabik was out several weeks for the Wolves as well, from Dec. 19 to Jan. 9, with an enlarged spleen. He complained of not feeling well, was tested repeatedly for mono, but it wasn't mono.

Michael Forney is having trouble getting into the North Dakota line-up after shoulder surgery. He is healthy again, but his team would like him to get stronger. (Edit: read my NCAA update for quotes from Marr on this)

Chad Denny left tonight's Gladiators game complaining of vision problems. He said it was going back to when he got a puck to the eye a month or so ago. He had been playing as the 10th forward early in the game.

Myles Stoesz has a very nice black eye, suffered at the hands of Nate Kiser of South Carolina on Friday night. Stoesz was on the trainer's table after tonight's game, but it was just the team doctor making sure his eye was OK. The damage appeared to be the skin around the eye only, his eyeball was white and clear. Here are some photos of his eye.




I think he took a stick in the mouth in warmups as well.

Chad Brownlee headed to the Gladiators?

On January 7, Chad Brownlee was transferred to the 30-day IR by the ECHL Idaho Steelheads. But his next move may be onto the roster of the Gwinnett Gladiators. His name appeared on Gladiators coach Jeff Pyle's white board on the same night that he expressed extreme dissatisfaction with his entire blue line, calling out Jon Sitko, Dinos Stamoulis and Chad Denny specifically. Pyle said he would be making changes to the line-up in conjunction with the all-star break.

Brownlee is a 23-year-old rookie out of Minnesota-Mankato. Here are his stats, and here's his profile on Hockey's Future. The 6'2, right-shooting defenseman was a 6th-round pick of Vancouver in 2003.

IIHF and NHL reach deal on junior Europeans

From TSN:

Following the five hour meeting with representatives of the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia and Sweden, both sides agreed that a player who is still under contract with an IIHF team and has not reached his 20th birthday must be first offered back to his team in Europe. The new proposal sees the age limit increased by two years.

This provision does not affect players who where selected in the first round of the NHL draft.

Putting this in concrete terms, let's say that the Thrashers wanted to sign Niklas Lucenius last summer right after drafting him. If I'm reading this story correctly, under this new rule, the Thrashers wouldn't be able to sign him until he was 20, because he had a contract with Tampare already.

Thinking about it for a minute, I'm not sure this rule is going far enough. Rarely are Europeans signed before they are 20 anyway, unless they're first rounders, and they are excluded. This would only effect a handful of guys (an example I can think of would have been Viktor Dovgan -- well, assuming the Russians were in). Setting the age at 22 would seem to do a lot more. But then you have the awkwardness of the CBA mandating that you sign a guy by the two-year June 1 deadline past drafting, but you can't actually use him for another couple more. Real change to this rule is probably going to have to go hand in hand with some CBA massaging.

Comparing Boris Valabik's penalties to last year

In December 2006, as part of my Chicago Wolves update, I included a chart of the types and number of penalties defenseman Boris Valabik was taking in games. It showed that the overwhelming majority were aggressive penalties. That chart generated a lot of chatter, so I am reprising it.

I've waited until he played the same number of games this year as he had at the time of publication last year: 29 games. Last year as a rookie he had 113 penalty minutes after 29 games, while this year he has 95. So overall he is down, but the comparison table shows that the proportion of the penalties is about the same.

Infraction	Last year	This year
Fighting	35	35
Misconduct	30	20
Roughing	24	14
Holding	10	2
Hooking		4
Interference	8	8
Tripping	8	6
Elbowing	6	2
Instigator	4
Slashing	2	2
Unsportsmanlike	2	2
Charging	2
Crosscheck	2
Total (29 games)	113	95

Valabik has been in the same number of fights (7), and his most frequent minor penalty is still roughing. Holding and hooking are similar penalties, so these types are about the same. Elbowing is down.

What does it mean? Is Valabik finally getting his emotions in check? That's in the eye of the beholder I guess, but there are the numbers for you to digest.

Snow in Atlanta

So yeah, it's snowing. Started late afternoon, coming down in big wet chunks. To me, this meant only one thing: start the drive home now because the traffic is only going to get worse.

I've seen enough snow to last a lifetime already, having grown up in the snow belt. When I was young, I thought everyone got 120" of snow a year. I really did. So if I never see another flake, that will be fine by me. I've gotten my fill.

My cat, the young southern belle that she is, did not know what to make of the snow today, however. She eventually decided she did not like it. Whether it was too much like rain or just scared her, we'll never know.

I've lived in Atlanta about 10 years, and can tell you it snows about one day a year, and generally doesn't stick for more than a few hours. We'll see if it's still here in the morning.

11:00pm update: Still coming down, still very slushy.

Poll result: readers think Sterling will see 5-15 more games

In this week's poll, I asked "How many NHL games will Brett Sterling play this year?" He has already played 10.

The voting came out this way
52% said 15-25 games
26% said 11-15 games
21% said 10 games (current total), in other words, won't be called back up
0% said 26+ games

So this means that a majority of readers think Sterling will play between 5 and 15 more games. A little more than a cup of coffee. I think Bryan Little will be back to Atlanta before Sterling, so it would take a couple injuries on scoring lines to get him back up.

Sterling has 21 goals in 30 AHL games this year, and with 42 games left in the season, is on pace to score exactly 50 goals (he had 55 last year). He's +5, on a team that ranges from +18 (Joel Kwiatkowski) to -11 (Scott Lehman).

Tomorrow is crucial meeting between NHL and IIHF

Jan. 16 is the date of a crucial meeting between the NHL and IIHF, regarding the future of the transfer agreement that governs the movement of Europeans to NHL teams. Keep your eyes and ears open for news of the outcome. It will have far-reaching consequences.

From a December CP article:

Both the NHL and IIHF essentially agree on the main problem with the current agreement, that too many young European players are signed and come over to the NHL before they are ready. Of the 59 European players that signed NHL contracts for 2007-08, the IIHF says only six currently play in the NHL. Seven were returned to Europe and 46 are in North American minor leagues.

"This is detrimental to player development and to the European leagues," said Fasel.

The NHL agrees, especially since the current agreement sees the league pay US$200,000 for each European transfer - whether they make the NHL or not.

"The key will be to see if a dynamic can be created that will disincentivize our clubs from signing European players and bringing them to North America before they are ready to play in the NHL," Bill Daly, the NHL's deputy commissioner, told The Canadian Press. ...

"Quite frankly, the current structure of this agreement is too expensive for us," said Daly. "We have to take a hard look at how this is working and how we can modify it so that we are no longer signing as many players who aren't yet ready for play in the NHL - and we aren't obligated to pay as much money as a result."