griffinshockey.com - Griffiti http://griffinshockey.com/ Infinity Site Manager en-us Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:05:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2426 Rookie goaltender Petr Mrazek has sparkled during his first professional season. When Petr Mrazek won his debut in a Red Wings uniform, his Detroit teammates could hardly contain their enthusiasm. “He's awesome," said forward Cory Emmerton, who was one of five Red Wings to score in the 5-1 road victory over the St. Louis Blues on Feb. 7. "I didn't really know what to expect, but he was great. He had no problem playing the puck. He looked very confident. He made huge stops.” "Mrazek did a great job in net, very stellar, calm back there,” said defenseman Niklas Kronwall. "He never really panicked whatsoever. I thought he was square to the puck all night, kept control of the rebounds. I thought he looked really good.” "He played well,” said Red Wings coach Mike Babcock. “He really handles the puck well. That makes it easy for the D. The other thing I liked about him is he didn't generate second chances for them. The puck wasn't coming off him. It was soft; it was under control. Good for the kid. It's not an easy league to play in.” Mrazek, who was a week away from his 21st birthday, became the youngest goalie to start for the Red Wings since Chris Osgood was 20 years, 10 months, 19 days old when he made his 1993-94 debut. Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:04:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2425 Red Wings prospect Riley Sheahan has come to realize that he has been given the chance to do something that very few are able to achieve. Life is what you make it. Growing up, Riley Sheahan and his older sister Karli were encouraged to participate in sports by their parents, Mike and Peggy, who were both physical education teachers in St. Catharines, Ontario. “We always had access to gyms when we were young,” Sheahan recalled. “At times, I was more into basketball than hockey because both my parents were basketball coaches. My mom even played basketball at a Canadian university.” As the family was living north of the 49th parallel, however, it was almost inevitable that Sheahan would eventually gravitate toward hockey. “Most of my friends were playing hockey and I eventually realized that I was better at hockey than I was at basketball.” While his sister turned her sights on rowing (she earned a scholarship to the University of Texas), Sheahan focused on hockey, eventually playing Junior B hockey in his hometown and earning the attention of the University of Notre Dame. Although he visited Boston College, Sheahan admits there wasn’t much debate about where he was headed. Coming from an Irish family, Notre Dame seemed a natural fit. Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:03:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2424 Entrepreneurial defenseman Nathan Paetsch is determined to be successful on and off the ice. Griffins defenseman Nathan Paetsch was born in LeRoy, Saskatchewan, a small town located in the western prairies of Canada – an environment that would exert a big influence over his life. “It made me the person I am today,” said Paetsch, who has fond memories of growing up in a town of 400 people. “It was a great place to grow up. “My dad had a key to the rink down the road, so I had the opportunity to skate whenever I wanted. It was just a safe feeling. I’d get home from school and play street hockey for hours. You knew when dinner time was and you just went home.” Paetsch, who has an older sister, spent most of his formative years being coached by his electrician father, Rich, a demanding disciplinarian who had plenty of advice for his son. “He definitely pushed me,” he recalled. “Like most of his generation, he was old school. He was a strong voice in my development and he helped build my character.” Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:02:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2423 Getting into the AHL playoffs is the first step on what every team hopes will be a journey to a Calder Cup championship. Jeff Hoggan is the only Griffins player who has lifted the Calder Cup trophy, having won the AHL championship as a member of the Houston Aeros following the 2002-03 regular season. Even though a decade has passed since his rookie year, Hoggan said it doesn’t seem that long ago. “It seems like yesterday,” he said. “It was my first year and I thought there were more to come.” The Griffins’ captain learned that it wasn’t that easy. In fact, since that time, he has not been on a team that has even come close. He hopes that changes this year. “You don’t want to get too carried away. As the cliché goes, you don’t want to put the cart before the horse because we’re still fighting for a playoff spot,” he said. “But I have a feeling.” It’s the same special feeling that he had as a member of the Aeros. Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:01:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2422 The move by the Griffins Youth Foundation to expand its hockey program to high school-age students has been a blessing for players like Travus Thrun and Kylie Lindsey. Travus Thrun and Kylie Lindsey have little in common, except for one thing – they both love to play hockey. Both are grateful that they still get to participate in their favorite sport, an opportunity that would not have been available to them if the Griffins Youth Foundation hadn’t expanded its program to include 10th- through 12th-grade students this season. Travus, who was recently named the Youth Foundation’s Player of the Year, is a cognitively impaired junior at Northview High School. He joined the Youth Foundation in 2004 when he was 10. Kylie, meanwhile, is a senior at Wyoming High School, where she gets good grades while balancing her work schedule between two part-time jobs. Her school has no hockey program, so the Youth Foundation gives her the chance to play. Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:57:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2369 Veteran defenseman Brennan Evans is happy to still be playing after 10 seasons in the AHL. Brennan Evans would love to be a rock star someday. There’s only one problem. “I just lack the musical talent,” Evans said. “I have a guitar and I can probably play the intro to about 10 songs, but that’s about it.” An avid music lover, his tastes run the complete gamut – Pink Floyd and Pearl Jam are two of his favorites – but he draws the line at country, which is ironic since country is almost all you hear in his hometown of Camrose, Alberta, located in the prairies in western Canada. “I go to concerts every chance I get,” Evans said. “I saw Roger Waters this past summer and it was unbelievable, but the timing couldn’t have been worse because I ended up with a bad case of kidney stones.” Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:51:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2368 Now in his fourth season with the Griffins, the Red Wings’ former first-round draft pick is confident he’s heading in the right direction. Tom McCollum came to Grand Rapids with high expectations, having been selected in the first round of the 2008 NHL Entry Draft by the Detroit Red Wings. Seen as a potential successor in goal to Chris Osgood, McCollum struggled during his first three years, splitting each season between the Griffins and the Toledo Walleye in the ECHL. While some critics were ready to write off the New York state native as a bust, the Red Wings kept working with their prized prospect, hoping for a replay of Jimmy Howard, their former second-round pick who blossomed after four seasons in Grand Rapids. McCollum knows the story all too well. Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:44:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2367 Scouts rave about Adam Almquist’s hockey sense. It will be up to the young defenseman to strengthen the argument that he is an NHL talent in the making. Gustav Nyquist jokingly complains that AHL rookie Adam Almquist – his fellow Swedish countryman and teammate – keeps all his stories to himself. “Nobody knows about him,” Nyquist said. “He’s the man of mystery.” In his defense, Almquist says he is just a good listener. If he’s perceived as being quiet, it’s just that he would prefer to let his game do the talking. Nearing the halfway point of his first full season with the Griffins, it’s obvious that Almquist’s play speaks volumes. “For a defenseman, his skill level is excellent,” said Griffins assistant coach Jim Paek, a former NHL defenseman himself. “He’s got great hockey sense and knows how to read plays and position himself. He moves really well across the blue line, has great vision and shows poise with the puck." Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:36:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2365 Norm Kolenda has been a fixture on the local hockey scene since the late 1940s. For more than 60 years, there has been a perpetual bond between Norm Kolenda and hockey. “He’s worked with the Rockets, the Blades, the Owls and the Griffins,” said Harold ‘Doc’ Pierce, who has known Kolenda for more than half of those years. “He helped start GRAHA and helped get high school hockey going. He’s done more for youth hockey than anybody else I know. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s Mr. Hockey in Grand Rapids.” And yet, his name is not that well known. “Most people have no idea what he’s done for hockey in the area because he’s so quiet and so modest,” said Jack Harkness, who has known Kolenda since they were both teenagers. Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:48:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2312 Undrafted due to his size, former Ferris State Bulldog Chad Billins wants to prove that the Griffins made a wise choice when they signed the stray defenseman to a one-year contract. The English Bulldog, a breed symbolic of strength, tenacity, stubborn determination and limitless loyalty, is the official mascot of no less than 39 American universities. For last year’s Ferris State University hockey team, there could have been no better mascot. Griffins rookie Chad Billins was a member of the 2011-12 squad that surprised the collegiate hockey world by making it all the way to the championship game of the Frozen Four, hockey’s answer to basketball’s Final Four. Nobody expected the Bulldogs to go that far. In fact, many of the Ferris State players themselves might not have believed it at the beginning of the season. “But as the season progressed, I felt like we had a very good team, and I mean TEAM,” said Billins, who was a co-captain and the school’s top scoring defenseman. “People often take the word ‘team’ lightly, but we really were a team. We had great role players, guys who did their job and were determined to play for each other. We were very close and we’d do anything for each other. “It made it that much more special when we went as far as we did.” Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:44:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2311 Griffins captain Jeff Hoggan is a firm believer in the power of positive thinking. When Jeff Hoggan left Hope, British Columbia, in 1998 to play college hockey for Nebraska-Omaha, he never abandoned hope. He felt confident that he would eventually find his way to the NHL. “I’m a small-town kid, and I believe that you never forget where you come from, and I’m proud to say that I come from Hope,” said Hoggan, who would eventually play in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues, Boston Bruins and Phoenix Coyotes. All roads, it seems, pass through Hope, which is 90-some miles east of Vancouver. The Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 1) travels through Hope, which also serves as the intersection of the Coquihalla Highway, the Crowsnest Highway and Highway 7. It is best known as the location of the Sylvester Stallone action movie, Rambo: First Blood, the first of more than a dozen Hollywood films to use the town’s scenic beauty to its advantage. “When I was growing up, it was a logging community where everybody’s dad or someone in the family had ties either to the log yard or lumber mill. Now it’s a stop for gas and fast food,” said Hoggan, who proposed to his wife, Chevonne, on Mount Hope. Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:41:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2310 If there’s funny business going on, you can usually count on Triston Grant being nearby. There aren’t many hockey heavyweights who would be brave enough to list a Muppet as one of their nicknames on the team questionnaire, but then Triston Grant is hardly your typical tough customer. But Fozzie Bear? Really? “Last year in Oklahoma City I took a slapshot right in the nose, and it swelled up so that it looked like a button nose,” Grant said. “One of the Barons’ assistant coaches, Gerry Fleming, said I looked like Fozzie Bear. It sounded funny and it just kind of stuck the rest of the year. “I’ve been called worse things.” The nickname fits in more ways than one. Not only does Grant’s smiling, stubbled face bear a passing resemblance to his fuzzy counterpart, but his sense of humor also matches the comic character’s love of jokes and running gags. Grant is the unofficial team cut-up, the guy who keeps his teammates on an even keel with his goofy gags, one-liners and practical jokes. “A lot of guys who are in my position tend to be that way because you don’t want to be so intimidating that it isn’t fun,” Grant said. “For me, it just wouldn’t work if I was always a tough guy.” Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:35:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2309 As the Griffins’ equipment manager, Brad “Dogg” Thompson plays an important role in helping to prepare the players to excel every game. Officially, Brad Thompson is the Griffins’ equipment manager. Unofficially, he is the team mom and chief cheerleader. “I might be a halfway decent equipment guy to keep my job this long,” said Thompson, who is in his 16th season with the Griffins. “But at the end of the day, I play the roles of counselor, cheerleader and motivator, too.” He’s called “Dogg” by the players, a nickname hung on him by former Griffins captain Ed Patterson in reference not only to Thompson’s appreciation of rapper Snoop Dogg, but also to his willingness to work like a dog. “I have no problem with the long nights and all of the travel because it’s part of the job,” Thompson said. “I’m always working for the next day, looking forward to helping the players excel to the best of their ability.” Thompson knows there is not a lot he can do to improve a player on the ice, but he can help them in other ways, whether it’s providing the the tools and equipment necessary to play the game to the best of their ability, or dispensing advice about life away from the rink. “I say I can’t make you a better hockey player, but I can try to help make you a better person,” he said. Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:29:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2308 Thanks in part to the opportunities provided by the Griffins Youth Foundation, Shane Mooney feels ready to serve his country as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. Playing hockey in the Griffins Youth Foundation program may not seem like an obvious path to the Marines, but for Shane Mooney, it was one opportunity for which he will be forever grateful. Shane was just four years old when he attended the Griffins’ inaugural game in October 1996. Six years later, he received hockey skates for Christmas and enrolled in the Learn to Skate program at Griff’s IceHouse. Being season ticket holders, the Mooneys were big Griffins fans. His parents, Pat and Kathy, both had jobs, but they felt the cost of hockey put the sport out of reach for their son to play. “We went to all of the Griffins games, and Shane loved sitting in the seats by the bench,” she said. “He always had his face pressed up against the glass.” Fri, 12 Oct 2012 07:41:00 http://www.griffinshockey.com/news/griffiti/?article_id=2253 From growing up in the Upper Peninsula to his various coaching stints across the state, Jeff Blashill thinks his Michigan roots will serve him well in his new job as the head coach of the Grand Rapids Griffins. Talk to almost any coach and you will discover that his coaching philosophy has been formed by the experiences and places he has encountered over the course of his career. Jeff Blashill has zigzagged his way across the map of Michigan, collecting subconscious souvenirs from stops in Sault Ste. Marie, Big Rapids, Kalamazoo and Detroit, along with Great Lakes detours to Oxford, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana. For a young coach who won’t turn 39 until December, Blashill has accumulated miles and miles of experience that he believes will serve him well as he becomes the ninth head coach in the 17-year history of the Grand Rapids Griffins. Born in Detroit, he spent his formative years in Sault Ste. Marie, where Jim and Rosemary Blashill had moved when he was little. They believed it would be a good place to raise their family, which included Jeff’s older sisters Lisa and Deb and, later, younger brother Tim. The family lived on the campus of Lake Superior State University, where Jim had come to teach criminal justice after 10 years on the force of the Detroit Police Department. Growing up in the Soo meant one thing. “When you’re a young boy, you play hockey,” Blashill said. “The reason I became a hockey player is that simple. I was extremely lucky to grow up in the Soo.”