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Meet The New Guys 2023
Find out who landed where and what it means in our Meet The New Guys Issue. Inside, you'll see features on Connor Bedard, Erik Karlsson, P-L Dubois and many, many more. Plus, we look at the impact of the new Professional Women's Hockey League, and we remember Rodion Amirov, Rocky Wirtz and Brian O'Neill.
STARTING FROM SCRATCH
PICTURE THIS: IT’S THE 2024 NHL off-season, and thanks to a few COVID-related pauses during the year, the Stanley Cup was finally awarded in late July, capping the fourth of five seasons greatly affected by the pandemic. The new Epsilon variant has been spreading fast. Looks like it’s going to be another bubble season for ’24-25 while we get this thing under control. You know the drill: empty arenas, drastically reduced revenue and all that stuff we thought we had moved past. Four franchises in particular are struggling, and they have no idea how they can survive next season and beyond without selling tickets. The other 28 team owners don’t want to prop them up, so a vote is held, the NHL is officially dissolved, and a new league is…
HONOUR, PRIDE, COURAGE
IT’S BEEN SPECULATED THERE are pictures somewhere out there in which Rodion Amirov is not smiling. But good luck tracking those down. Smiling while he’s skating out onto the ice for a game in Russia. Smiling when he’s young and strong with shredded abs on a paddleboard. Smiling under a hat he’s wearing to hide the fact chemotherapy has robbed him of the lovely head of hair he once had. Smiling during an on-ice session with Maple Leafs assistant GM Hayley Wickenheiser just days before receiving the grimmest diagnosis imaginable. Rodion Amirov was a skilled, silky-smooth left winger with outstanding offensive instincts. He was good enough to be taken in the top half of the first round of the 2020 NHL draft. Nobody was predicting superstardom, but neither was anyone forecasting…
GENTLE BUT STERN
DURING HIS FIRST NINE seasons in the NHL playing for Montreal, Chris Nilan got to know Brian O’Neill quite well. “He suspended me a few times,” recalled Nilan about O’Neill, the former executive vice-president of the NHL who died July 21 at 94. “The big one was the Middleton thing.” During the Canadiens’ third game of 1985-86 at Boston Garden – a 7-2 loss to the Bruins – Nilan was given a 10-minute attempt-to-injure penalty and a game misconduct after appearing to butt-end the Bruins’ Rick Middleton in the mouth. O’Neill suspended Nilan for eight games. “I think he was fair to me, but I think the Middleton thing was a little excessive because I know I didn’t butt-end him, I hit him with my glove,” Nilan said. “But it looks…
REMEMBERING ROCKY
AT PRIVATE AND PUBLIC memorial services, Chicago Blackhawks chairman and owner W. Rockwell ‘Rocky’ Wirtz was remembered as an approachable, humble and caring family man. Despite an estimated worth in the billions, Wirtz chatted and connected easily with anyone from customers at the United Center to government honchos. Wirtz also was lauded for turning around a downtrodden Original Six franchise after the death of his father, Bill, in 2007. Rocky finally put Blackhawks home games on TV, then oversaw Chicago’s run to three Stanley Cups over six seasons. At championship celebrations, fans showered him with chants of “Rocky, Rocky, Rocky!” That should be the legacy of Wirtz, who died suddenly on July 25 at 70. Rocky was the third generation from the Wirtz family to control the Blackhawks after grandfather Arthur, a…
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