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Champions Issue 2021
Bolts go back to back! We celebrate the Lightning's historic victory, as well and the title runs for teams across the world in our Champions Issue. Also inside: 31 break-out players to watch next season, the future of NHLers at the Olympics, the push to get Herb Carnegie in the HHOF, and much more.
NO HOCKEY AT HOME? MAY AS WELL TRAVEL
SINCE THE OHL HAD no season, we can only look to the future when discussing the 2020-21 campaign. Shane Wright, the Kingston Frontenacs phenom, captained Canada to gold at the world under-18s, with Sarnia Sting ace Benjamin Gaudreau between the pipes and a host of other OHLers making valuable contributions. A number of Gaudreau’s 2021 NHL draft class peers headed to Europe to get games in, from Brennan Othmann and Mason McTavish in Switzerland to Brandt Clarke in Slovakia and Francesco Pinelli in Slovenia (all four were on the world under-18 squad, too). The most intriguing OHL news was the league draft, where the Sudbury Wolves won an open lottery to pick first overall. The franchise that took Quinton Byfield first overall in 2018 went with another ‘Q’ three years later, taking Buffalo…
CRAZY-GOOD COLE
GIVEN EVERYTHING THE WORLD has gone through in the past year-and-a-half, hockey players who got a chance to play this season were extra-grateful for the opportunity. To win a title on top of it all? That’s just plain exhilarating, a reward for all the hard work that goes into a championship campaign like the one put together by the NAHL’s Shreveport Mudbugs. “We definitely believed it, starting a couple of months ago,” said goalie Cole Hudson. “But if you told me in August, during COVID, that I’d be lifting the Robertson Cup, I’d call you crazy.” What’s crazy is how good Hudson was for the Mudbugs. The NCAA Vermont commit was playoff MVP after going 9-0 in the post-season with a 1.54 GAA and .941 save percentage. Shreveport beat a tough…
FROM POINT A TO POINT B
THE KID WASN’T EVEN supposed to be there. He’d missed the cut when the 2014 CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game unveiled its initial rosters. An injury to a promising young man named Sam Bennett unexpectedly opened up a spot, however, and Brayden Point wasn’t going to waste his opportunity. Former NHL enforcer and assistant coach Tim Hunter was tasked with coaching Team Orr for the game. He was going over his squad with NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr, who explained the late addition of Point, an undersized 17-year-old center in the midst of breaking out in his second full season with the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors. Marr dropped a warning: Point had a bit of a chip on his shoulder because he felt he should’ve made the original roster. “Oh,” Hunter said.…
RIDE THE LIGHTNING
TAMPA BAY HAS COME a long way as a hockey town. Growing up in Florida, it wasn’t exactly easy to develop a real connection with the sport. So how did it happen? Let’s rewind to one of my first – and fondest – memories of the Lightning franchise: the elusive $99 season ticket. After spending their inaugural expansion season in a small, old barn called Expo Hall, the Bolts moved across the bay for the 1993-94 season to the cavernous building in St. Petersburg that was soon to be renamed the ThunderDome. With nearly 30,000 seats in a built-for-baseball stadium that now hosts MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays, the team put 999 season tickets up for sale for the absurdly low cost of $2.68 a game in order to spur interest. And, hey, it…
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