Fronts: Erik The Greatbranson pegged as Top-10 pick

Note the time and place: OHL Prospects says the Kingston Frontenacs defenceman Erik Gudbranson is "going to need to take a huge step back next year in order to NOT be a top 10 selection (in the NHL draft)." The World of Junior Hockey, meantime, rates him as a top-10 pick.

There is a rationale to writing a junior hockey post in the first full week of July, beyond unseasonably mild temps in the low 20s making it feel like mid-September. It is part of trying to help the diehards get primed for what the season has in store for the Fronts in the 12th year under owner Doug Springer, whose regime is still awaiting its first playoff series win.

Brock Otten's and Nathan Fournier's learned opinions are a good baseline with respect to the Erik The Greatbranson (you like it, feel free to steal it). Two learned hockey minds reckon that Gudbranson stands a rather good chance of becoming a high draft pick. It will be a reflection on the Fronts if he slips out of the first round, like his blueline brethren, Taylor Doherty, did in the past season before being taken by the San Jose Sharks at the bottom the second round 10 days ago in Montreal.

This might also serve as a passionate plea to the people paid to cover the major junior hockey team in the Limestone City. Please do not punt on addressing fans intelligently by towing the HMCS Royal Mavesty's party line. This is 2009. The "write what he said" approach to reportage does not work anymore. It flies about as well Springer infamous calling GM-for-life Larry Mavety "an astute hockey man" when the pair of them are well into their second decade without a playoff series win, with not a hint of change in sight in the organization's structure.

Point being, there have to be some standards beyond Springer and Mav's 11 levels of Fail. Kingston ratepayers have gifted Springer with a $43-million arena for a team which has been at the bottom of the standings and was called in front of city council last February over its poor play and subpar attendance figures (sorry, it was over their "marketing plan").

That is why it is good to get it down on record with Gudbranson. Please commit it to memory that a learned hockey mind feels that the Orleans native, who was captain of the gold medal-winning Team Ontario at the World Under-17 Challenge in January and did not look out of place as an underaged player at the world under-18 tournament in North Dakota this spring, could be a top 10 pick.

There should be no repeat of the self-back patting the Frontenacs organization indulged in after another Doherty was taken by San Jose. Similarly, the big d-man came into last season touted as a potential first-rounder ("Frontenacs defenceman Taylor Doherty, by the way, is being touted a first-rounder in at least one mock draft," this site, Nov. 7, 2008). His draft stock fell off the side of the cliff in the first half of the season, since playing for a gong-show franchise with poor coaching clearly slowed his development.

In Kingston, where going along to get along means having the memory of a fruit fly when it comes to the franchise's false promises and myriad stupidities, Tim Cunningham of TVCogeco and K-Rock 105.7 was about the only person in the traditional media who was honest about Doherty.

Everyone else, and no one is judging, was only to happy to write something along the lines of, "Interest in Messrs. Werek and Doherty rose smartly during the second half of the 2008-09 OHL season as both players honed individual skills and rounded out their games." (That is just generic, not specific; there is tremendous respect on this end for the veteran journo.) If Mavety said of Doherty and Ethan Werek prior to the draft that "those two guys are much better players today than they were a year ago," then it must be true. Never mind that Mavety, a losing GM whose propensity toward self-serving statements is surpassed only by his knack for self-preservation, is homogeneously unqualified to offer an informed assessment of a player's progress.

Saying that interest Doherty rose sharply in the second half of the season is true, at face value. It is just that first interest in the big rearguard had to drop drastically before it rose, marginally. He was touted as a first-round pick. That did not happen. Yet the Frontenacs were not held accountable. Meantime, some of the diehards at Fronts Talk believe Doherty will need a ticket out of Kingston to realize his potential.

"Doherty's game has so many holes in it that it'll take a top-notch organization with a track record of developing raw potential in order to fix it. I just don't see Kingston being that club. Especially with how high San Jose took Doherty (2nd round), I think that by about mid-season, if Doherty is still struggling here, you might see San Jose ask that he be dealt elsewhere. To be completely honest, I'm surprised Doherty's camp didn't ask for a trade last year, when it was obvious his game needed a lot of refining and he wasn't getting it here."

There is also speculation, idle mind you, whether NHL teams are cool with having their prospects develop, such as it were, in the Kingston organization. It is pretty evident, based on the moves Mavengil has made (Doug Gilmour says he's responsible for player personnel moves, but they look an awful lot like Mavety's), that the hope is just try to eke out a playoff berth.

People should not be satisfied by second-best, or seeing first-round talent slide to the second. K-town deserves better, honest.

Wherefore art Werek headed?

Kingston Frontenacs brass has bigger fish to fry than promoting its players, so it probably would not hurt to pass along with Ethan Werek-related linkage.

• One of Coming Down The Pipe!'s mockups of the first round has the Chicago Blackhawks taking Werek in the first round, 28th overall.
  
  
• Werek is No. 41 in TSN's final draft rankings.
  
  
• Ryan Kennedy at The Hockey News sees Werek as a second-round steal:

  "A highly recruited scoring pivot who played Jr. A with 2008 second-rounder Corey Trivino, Werek’s Ontario League career got off to a spotty start, as did the entire Fronts’ organization this season. But once Doug Gilmour came to town as coach, Werek was unleashed and his stock is bouncing back."

Anyway, Fronts management can focus on stifling the local media and planning the going-away party they're holding in Kinger's honour. Let's hope they reconsider their decision to have it the day after he leaves town.

John Tavares, Reggie Bush redux and the Gretzky no one remembers

One question du jour is whether Garth Snow will really take someone whose name does not rhyme with "avares" for the New York Islanders with the No. 1 overall pick.

Actually, it's three questions, posed the way Homer Simpson did when he and Apu met the head of the Kwik-E-Mart: Are you really not going to take John Tavares? Really? You?

Ours is not to divine the intent of Snow, who has warned he "won't be ruled by popular opinion." (Newsday.) One point that might not have been as emphasized as it should have been is that what's happened with Tavares over the past several weeks also goes back to something a young Wayne Gretzky pointed out 30 years ago.

The rules in hockey for players under the age of 20, which tend toward the one-size-fits-all, make sense for 99.9 per cent of the players. As you know, Tavares ended up with four seasons of junior before becoming eligible for the draft, instead of the standard two. He had an extra season at the front end, when the OHL let him into the league as a underaged 15-year-old in 2005. The OHL acted logically. There was no budging the age cut-off for the NHL draft, even though Tavares was clearly one player who had overcome early-year bias to become regarded as Everyone's First Overall Pick.

You likely know that Gretzky turned pro at age 17 in 1978, signing with the World Hockey Association, which folded a year later (the Edmonton Oilers and three other teams from "the Waaaaaaah" joined the NHL in an expansion which the league called a merger, but was really an expansion). What is less remembered is Walter Gretzky's version of how that came to pass, as he told it in Gretzky: From the Back Yard Rink to the Stanley Cup, a memoir published in the mid-'80s.

As the elder Gretzky put it, Wayne suggested going after his junior team, the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, made a mid-season coaching change. He called home and asked his father to call the late John Bassett, Jr. Bassett, who owned the Birmingham Bulls, was a bit of a precursor to Jim Balsillie, a rich guy from Southern Ontario who was not above firing a shot across the bow of the NHL. In Bassett's case, that meant signing players before they were old enough for the NHL draft (at the time, the league drafted players at age 20)

"... in the very year the two leagues had agreed to go ahead and keep hands off under-age players, he'd gone and signed Ken Linseman, an 18-year-old playing for the Kingston Canadians. The way Wayne had it figured, if Mr. Bassett would sign one under-age player, maybe he'd sign two.

"He was really upset. I tried to clam him down and said I'd call Mr. Bassett. Twenty minutes later the phone rang again. 'Did you get him?' Wayne asked. 'What did he say?'

"Now, I had no intention of calling Mr. Bassett. I just let on I had while I tried to settle Wayne down. 'Stay in junior,' I said. ... 'You've got three more years of junior. You can play one year as an over-age ... In four years ou can go just about wherever you want and name your price!'

" 'If I stay here four more years," he said, "I'll never play pro. The longer you stay the more fault they'll find. Call Mr. Bassett! Please!" (Emphasis mine.)

That seems to shed light on what's happened with the public perception of John Tavares. The two extra seasons in junior gave everyone a longer window to conduct their fault-finding mission, pick at his skating, his dedication to defensive play. They simply had a better chance to build a case that he's less The Franchise than a premier offensive talent.

(It's also fair game to ask what playing a half-season for the London Knights, whom some call "The U of junior hockey," did for Tavares' rep. The Knights, in certain puckhead circles, are a bit like the Miami Hurricanes in college football back in the day. They're talented, but tend to let people know it, which doesn't play well in hockey.)

The point Gretzky made 30 years ago is something to consider as background to whatever you have/will read about Friday's NHL draft. Everyone has just had so long to size up Johnny T. the way one would an apple, and start paring off pieces. For pity's sake, even an estimable hockey writer such as Pierre LeBrun stresses, "I really don't know the gap between Tavares, (Swedish defenceman Victor) Hedman and (Brampton Battalion's Matt) Duchene other than what NHL scouts tell me," so who really knows with certainty which of them should be the first pick?

Like LeBrun says:

"The average hockey fan has been hearing about Tavares for a few years, the same way fans were warned repeatedly of the eventual arrivals of Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane in recent years.

"If Snow doesn't select Tavares, he better be sure of himself. The backlash in his market, I think, would be sizable; Isles fans have been talking up Tavares since Christmas."

One does wonder how analogous this might be to the lead-up to 2006 NFL draft and what happened with USC teammates Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart. The average football fan heard more than her/his fill about those two from 2004 through '06.

There was talk Leinart might have been a No. 1 overall pick after his junior season. In the fall of 2005, as he led USC to a 12-0 regular season, it became evident Leinart was little more than, "a gutsy Heisman winner who doesn't have the physical ability to succeed when the guys on defense get bigger and faster." (Josh Lewin, Slate, Oct. 17, 2005.)

The talk became that Bush, who ran like like the second coming of Gale Sayers for three seasons at USC, was the drop-dead No. 1 pick. The above-linked article concluded, "in a few years, the accountants will be lining up outside Reggie Bush's door." All the wiseguys were making Bush Bowl cracks when the Houston Texans and San Francisco 49ers, who were vying for the worst record in the NFL, met in a late-season game.

You know the rest of the story. The kneejerkers howled when the Houston Texans took Mario Williams, a pass rusher from North Carolina State. Doing so meant passing on Bush, not to mention a Texas Longhorns QB named Vince Young, who was a Houston native. (Leinart, meantime, dropped all the way to the 10th overall pick.) Meantime, three years on, Williams is an All-Pro defensive end. Bush, who went No. 2 overall to the New Orleans Saints, has gained fewer rushing-receiving yards in his first three seasons than the Minnesota Vikings' Adrian Peterson has in his first two. Young is a head case. Leinart is a punchline.

That might be an apples-to-pears comparison. Different sport, eh. There are a few common threads. One is that fans and by extension the media had heard a lot more about one player than another. Another is that both involved a franchise struggling to build an identity and brand awareness. The Houston Texans were (and are) an expansion franchise which has never made the NFL playoffs and they share a state with the Dallas Cowboys.

The Islanders are so lost in the shuffle in the New York media market that, as George Vecsey reflected in a great piece for The New York Times last month, it's reasonable to wonder if "hockey has come and gone on Long Island."

Anyway, who knows what Garth Snow is thinking going into the final 96 hours for draft night. Chris Botta, the team's former public relations staffer turned blogger, has been a first explainer, hinting that something crazy might go down on Friday night. Again, who knows. The point is the obvious, the longer a player is in the spotlight, the greater chance to disprove the hype. It will probably happen next season with Kingston's Taylor Hall, who like Tavares had to wait an extra year to be drafted due to where his birthday falls.

That is why it keeps coming back to what Wayne Gretzky supposedly told his dad three decades ago. It turned out No. 99 had nothing to worry about, but he sure was on to something about the folly and wisdom of talent evaluators, though.

(As for the NHL draft, the main interest for this site is when the Kingston Frontenacs' Ethan Werek is taken. Bob McKenzie has him ranked 41st.

Fronts: Werek to Boston talk, Gilmour the closet Canadiens fan

Rest assured, the Kingston Frontenacs are still generating post fodder, even though it's the off-season and they haven't announced a trade or whether they have signed any draft picks beyond the first-rounder.

New England Hockey Journal has a look at whether Ethan Werek being drafted — irony alert! — by the Boston Bruins. Meantime, there's the ripple from coach Doug Gilmour telling Sun Media he would "one hundred per cent" want to work for Jim Balsillie if he brings a NHL team to Southern Ontario, right in the Toronto Maple Leafs' backyard.

It seems best to start with Werek, since it's less likely Fronts fans have seen it:

" 'He had a tough start to the year but really picked it up as things went along,' said another NHL scout, one who has followed Werek since his days with the Stouffville Spirit of the OPJHL. 'I think Doug Gilmour taking over behind the bench helped bring out the best in Ethan; he’s big, thinks the game well and has a quick release and accurate shot. He can both set up the play and finish it off, and he finishes his checks and plays with an edge.

" 'While his skating isn't the best, I wouldn't say that it's poor either. He could stand to get quicker, but he’s also showed that he can get there when he needs to.' "

The irony of Werek being a possible pick for the Bruins is that he was bound for Boston University before he opted to report to the Frontenacs.

As he has previously, Werek touched on why he didn't go to Boston U:

"Werek was picked ninth overall in the 2007 OHL Priority Selection by Kingston. At first, he spurned the OHL, determined to join legendary coach Jack Parker’s BU squad, even going the extra step to graduate from high school early. However, when there wasn’t enough room for him at BU in 2008-09 and, faced with another year of junior hockey, this time with Indiana of the USHL, Werek altered course and embraced the opportunity to play for one of the OHL's most storied franchises.

" 'It was a tough decision ... I wanted to go to BU and be a part of that great hockey tradition and outstanding academic institution. When things fell apart, and it was looking like I would have to play another year of junior hockey, it was just something that I felt would hurt my development. I give all the credit in the world to Coach (Jack) Parker and his staff; they were all extremely supportive and understood my decision, but it was one of the most difficult things I've had to do."

That does put the lie to any claim that Werek reporting was any validation for Frontenacs management (ignore the folderol about the Fronts being "one of the OHL's most storied franchises," since they are certainly in the top 20, keeping in mind the OHL has only 20 teams).

Incidentally, the article provides some material for the spin doctors in K-Town, noting "23 of the club's 40 losses were by one goal." That kind of ignores they lost 50 games when you count overtimes and shootouts. Really what 23-of-40 talk says is that this team was no good at winning tight games in the third period. Also, eight of their 18 wins were by one goal. Come to think of it, they won in overtime in Gilmour's debut, with Werek scoring the winner in the dying seconds, and beat London when Werek scored the tie-breaking goal with four seconds to play, on a crazy bounce. Thank goodness for randomness, or it might have been a 16-win season.

The hope, of course, is that the Frontenacs will be improved enough to at least treat Kingston fans to some playoff hockey at the K-Rock Pot next March (and maybe even the first week of April). Hope is tempered by being honest about the organization and not echoing the party line about Larry Mavety being an "astute hockey man" or landing the OHL All-Star game goes farther toward hosting a Memorial Cup than icing a competitive team.

(Owner Doug Springer, of course, said at the outset of last season the team's goal was "top four" in the Eastern Conference. Does this mean he won't celebrate if the Frontenacs finish anywhere from fifth to eight in the East and make the playoffs? Don't hold your breath.)

As for what Gilmour said, it was music to the ears to hear a decorated former Leafs captain say, "First and foremost I played for the Leafs ... but for hockey fans in this area it would be great. From the Leafs standpoint it would create a rivalry. I'm not here to go against the rules or start fighting with Gary Bettman. All I'm saying is that it could work. I don't see a downside." It shows he cares.

From a Frontenacs fan's perspective, though, it's just idle talk. The understanding all along, as it always is with a junior coach, is that if a NHL or AHL team comes calling, you pretty much bid him adieu and wish him good luck. It's the same as it is when a player moves up to The Show. Besides,Mark Potter noted on Kinger's radio show six months ago that pro teams would be quick to show an interest in Gilmour once he showed the barest sign of success. Meantime, he seems

It would be a hoot if Balsillie succeeds in moving a team to Southern Ontario and ends up having a couple former Leafs in the organization. It would be just like how the WHA Quebec Nordiques raided the Montreal Canadiens for players in the 1970s. A lot of dominoes have to fall for that to happen. Gilmour will be there in September ... beyond that, well uh, a man makes a contract with an eye to breaking it, not making it.

It has been 599 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

(Digression: It's not clear if Gilmour necessarily was raised as a Leafs fan. Kingston was always Switzerland when it came to the Canadiens-Leafs rivalry. Geographic distance, general resentment toward the big city and a local conceit than Kingston was of a more discerning taste than other cities of similar size meant it was never really part of Leafs Nation. It had Leafs fans, Canadiens fans and lots of Boston fans, since the Bruins had a farm team there in the 1960s and there was a connection with Harry Sinden, Wayne Cashman, Don Cherry and Freddie O'Donnell having coached or played for Boston in the 1970s.

Gilmour was born in 1963, so he's too young to really remember the Leafs' last Stanley Cup, but he would have been coming of age while the Habs were winning six Cups in the '70s and the Leafs were mediocre, my how times have changed. The Whig-Standard once ran a childhood photo of him in full hockey gear, wearing a Canadiens sweater. Those colours don't run, just sayin.')

Fronts: Werek to wreck it on draft day

Finding out where Ethan Werek goes in the NHL draft is to this site as scoring Aerosmith tickets was to Randall "Pink" Floyd Dazed and Confused ("major event of the summer"). Seriously, it is, in the sad-but-true department.

The excellent OHL Prospects is counting down the league's top 50 draft-eligible players and, by process of elimination, the Kingston Frontenacs centre and blog beejo is in the Top 10. Werek was the eighth OHLer and 32nd skater overall in the final NHL Central Scouting rankings. Astute readers will note that Werek chose the Frontenacs over college hockey at Boston University to help his draft status and he's only two spots ahead of a forward named Alex Chaisson who has chosen college hockey at Boston University.

(Update: Werek is ranked fifth among OHLers. He is 26th on the International Scouting Service list, so first round is a possibility.)

Here's what the site had to say, in part, about the Ethanator:

"Why the concerns about his offensive potential? In Stouffville Junior A last year, he outscored Corey Trivino, being a year younger, and all that was heard about Trivino last year was the offensive potential he had. This just in though, Werek can play, and play well. Scoring 32 goals on that Kingston team this year is quite impressive, considering how terrible they were. Even more impressive was his consistent effort throughout the entire season, continuing to improve as the season went along and he got more comfortable. Look at how he finished the season, 6 goals, 7 assists in the 8 games of March. Werek is just a solid player. He skates hard, forechecks and is developing into a very effective puck possession player. He has good hands and can from time to time, flash some serious stickhandling ability, especially in driving to the net, which he did with increasing authority as the season went along. He backchecks, he takes the body, and he's slowly developing into a power forward. He's also an incredibly intelligent player, who knows where to be on the ice."

For anyone wondering, the OHL has had at least 10 players taken in the first two rounds of every NHL draft held in the past 10 years, so that bodes well for Werek's chances. On average, the 10th OHL player selected goes about 46th overall, so keep that in mind for wagering purposes (actually, if you're betting on the NHL draft, you probably should seek help).

Anyway, the best to Werek, who became a beejo of this site early last season. It only seemed sporting to cheer for him after this site got great mileage out of his holdout in 2007-08 and the Frontenacs dumb-lucked into him. That went double when both Larry Mavety and Doug Gilmour would pull stunts like using a defenceman in a shootout instead of him, and such. It was clear early on that he'd be something once he adapted to the pace and physicality of the OHL. It also exacerbated the jock-sniffing once it was publicized that he was attending Queen's University.

Frontenacs defenceman Taylor Doherty is 15th on OHL Prospects' list, which confirms what observers such as Tim Cunningham of TVCogeco said all season:

"There is no denying that Doherty had a very disappointing season. He was talked about as a potential mid first rounder, and now could be lucky to see himself go in the mid 2nd round. However there are still things to like about him. For one, he's 6'8, 218lbs. For two, he has solid puck skills and shows great skating ability moving forward in carrying the puck up the ice. For three, he's not afraid to take the body and use his size to his advantage. Now for the downside. For one, while he's a solid straight away skater, his lateral and backwards mobility needs work, especially for him to develop into an effective two way defender. For two, he also needs to work on his defensive zone coverage. At times he becomes over aggressive and loses his man, leading to scoring opportunities. For three, his hockey sense at the offensive end has come into question and leads some to believe those offensive stats will never come. So that's three strikes for, three strikes against. He's a project, there is no denying it, but there is enough to like that suggests with solid coaching and an attitude directed towards improvement (where the draft interviews come in handy), he can develop into an NHL defender."

Do the Terrier dance...

Please, next year, let's have the Frozen Four championship game available in Canada on a tier 1 cable channel, since you don't get many Colby Cohen moments too often. Rogers Sportsnet, which showed some NCAA games earlier this season, had baseball commitments.

It would have been a hell of a lot better than that out-with-a-whimper final installment of the Battle of Ontario, where the Leafs done did themselves out of a spot in the NHL draft lottery. Boston U, as you know, beat Miami of Ohio 4-3 in overtime after scoring twice in the final minute of regulation to tie it before Cohen, off a stainless-steel cojones no-look pass from James Shattenkirk, shot and had the puck redirect off Miami of Ohio's Kevin Roeder. Crazy. It was Boise State on ice.

Seriously, the NCAA Tournament needs to be on in Canada. Is it selfish to feel ripped off by not getting to watch a college hockey game and not getting to see Brad May drop the mitts in his final NHL game?

Puck Daddy had the privilege to be there and The Terrier Hockey Fan Blog, suffice to say, is alight this morning. This more than makes up for Boston U losing Ethan Werek to the Kingston Frontenacs.

(Canada played at 5 p.m. ET at the under-18 world championship yesterday, meaning Werek, who scored two goals in an 8-1 win over Switzerland, could have been back in his hotel room to see his former Stouffville Spirit linemate, Corey Trivino, skate for Boston U.)

Fronts: That's presuming people watch Sportsnet, Two-Five

Ethan Werek does give the Kingston Frontenacs some redeeming qualities, unlike a certain owner and general mangler (not a typo) one could name, so he's entitled

"The next day we had a matinee match against London. We kept up with them until the third when the refs decided to get some TV time on Sportsnet by awarding us an endless amount of penalties. We lost that game 7-2, but we competed hard and it was a good weekend for the team." (emphasis mine)

This is where the uptight hockey types possibly swoop down and put the kibosh on the noble Werek's blogging efforts, but to them, we say, "hard cheese."

Werek is showing some personality and he's a 17-year-old having fun, and it's the end of another lost season in Kingston. Point being, the Frontenacs hierarchy, after the gong show perpetrated on Kingston fans across the past eleven seasons, has no moral authority to play censor. There's probably no repercussions anyway. That would require actual effort from GM-for-life Larry Mavety. We can't have that sort of thing in Kingston.

Kinger had a great interview with Werek, who's taking first-year Politics at Queen's, a couple weeks ago on CFRC 101.9. Someone double-dog dared Kinger to ask, "Who's more dysfunctional? The Frontenacs or the Queen's Political Studies department? Go!" Sanity prevailed, which is further proof that Kinger and Werek are the future.

Incidentally, it is venerable 67's coach Brian Kilrea's final game in Kingston tonight. Who knew Killer's middle name was Blair?

Related:
Werek's World (Coming Down The Pipe!)
And in the 8th game... (Patrick Kennedy, Kingston Whig-Standard)

Fronts: Why Werek came is purely academic, but....

Ethan Werek shed some light, sort of, on what prompted him to report to the Kingston Frontenacs.

It's mostly worth pointing out only for the fact Werek's arrival was heralded as a great affirmation of the Kingston franchise, GM-for-life Larry Mavety and by extension the enabler of the general mangler (not a typo), owner Doug Springer. Others of sound mind, if not body (join a gym, Sagert) believed Werek reported to help his status for the 2009 NHL draft (he's now rated 24th by the International Scouting Service and is getting some OHL rookie-of-the-year buzz). The interview he did with The Team 1260 in Edmonton wouldn't disabuse anyone of that notion.

On the events that summer which caused him to de-commit from Boston University and join the Frontenacs:

"In the end, I have no regrets about what happened. The thing was with that, I finished high school a year early and I wanted to finish off at my high school. I've been going there since Grace 3 and I wanted to finish off there. In the off-season, I approached my options. I was thinking of maybe going to BU a year early, but their team was a pretty skilled team this year and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get the ice time in my (NHL) draft year to maybe get shown, so... Kingston's been a great fit. I'm going to Queen's here, which is a top school. I'm just getting my education and playing in the OHL and I couldn't be happier."

One of the hosts followed up with a question about whether coming to Kingston was "simply an exposure aspect" with Werek doing into his draft season:

"I think that was a big part of it. Going to college, as a freshman, you kind of have to start near the bottom and work your way up. College, you only play 30-35 games. In the OHL you're playing 67, so it's more pro development ... it was a tough decision and something I'll always think back to, but in the end I'm happy with my decision."

He could have played that many games in the USHL, though. Later, he was asked, "Would you have gone to BU this year?"

"I would have rather to gone BU this year, start my university, I was just kind of laying out my decision until I was done high school."

The odd part about that is Mavety kept saying in 2007-08 that Werek would play for Kingston. The player says that all along, he wanted to give it a year to make his choice. The bottom line, it more less worked out. Werek has showcased himself for the draft, Mavety is somehow still in Springer's employ and that continues to provide much mirth for this blog and for The Kinger.

There is a semi-serious point that it is really ridiculous how early hockey players have to make a choice to pursue the major junior or NCAA stream. Perhaps Werek is just a different dude for bucking the system. There is little reason to doubt Werek's sincerity, since the alternative is to believe Larry Mavety.

It has been 485 days since Doug Springer has promised he would do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Snark break...

As you were hanging out with your mysterious cousin ... Willie Gardener was LeBron before there was a LeBron ...

Apparently, Chris Paul is Basketball Jesus ...


Doubt Paul's Messianic qualities all you want. Why else would he say he watches NBA League Pass, "religiously?"

It's past the point where one even gets angry to see Tim Raines lumped in with the Steroid Era ballplayers for doing cocaine in the '80s. Raines had trouble with the nose candy and came clean, so let it go.

The Montreal Canadiens — the CH is for "cratering Habs" — are giving Alex Kovalev some time off. It's no big deal. Kovalev usually takes off about 25 games a season.

Jesse Lumsden signed with the Edmonton Eskimos. As if Alberta's health-care system isn't under enough strain.

Male tennis players are a little too friendly with each other.

Owen Wilson might play a ballplayer in an upcoming movie. It's a Reese Witherspoon RomCom, so you've been warned well in advance.

The Calgary Hitmen junior hockey team might have gone a little heavy on the honey
shots in this commercial. It's a good-looking town, but this isn't doing much for Edmonton's inferiority complex (don't worry, Edmonton, you're unique and have a great personality).



This post was worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• The Kingston Voyageurs have advanced to the second round of the playoffs. So that is possible for a Kingston junior hockey team.
  
  The Frontenacs' Ethan Werek is up to 24th in the International Scouting Service's rankings for the NHL draft. Yes, this typist tends to beejo Ethan Werek. Incidentally, The Hockey News' hot list includes a player from the Indiana Ice, the team Werek supposedly left because the calibre of hockey was not good enough.
• Best of luck to K-Towner and former Queen's Golden Gael Matt Kirk. The CFL D-lineman has signed with Radoslav's beloved Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
  

(Clip via Puck Daddy.)

Fronts: Werek, Gudbranson get glowing reviews...

Brock Otten at OHL Prospects had some observations about the Kingston Frontenacs' legitimate prospects after seeing them in action in St. Catharines earlier Sunday.

Suffice to say, those who follow the Fronts with clear eyes might not be surprised by Otten's observations. (Kingston lost 4-1 to the Niagara Ice Dogs, thanks for asking.)

Forwards

• Ethan Werek — "The best player on the ice for Kingston, no question. Werek was just about the only player generating real offensive chances for the Fronts ... I think this guy is a big NHL draft riser as he continues to get better and better."
• Nathan Moon (Penguins draft pick) — "I see the flashes of skill, but I don't see the effort level. The Fronts went down 4-0 at the beginning of the 2nd period, and he appeared to just give up. He stopped battling for loose pucks, and began to float."
• Colt Kennedy — "I'm not sure how much offensive ability he really has, but he's a good energy guy ... I've heard he is getting some minor attention for the 2009 draft though and could end up as a late pick."

Defencemen

• Taylor Doherty — "He was a complete non-factor. On the first Ice Dog goal by (ex-Frontenac Thomas) Middup, he failed to tie up his man going to the net, and Middup was able to bang home a juicy rebound. I don't think he attempted to rush the puck up ice once this game and looked tentative and scared with it on his stick. Early in the third period, he took a lazy hooking penalty in his own zone and I don't think he saw the ice again in the game. This was also the first game I've noticed his skating being a potential issue."
• Erik Gudbranson — "He actually showed more of a physical edge than I had seen before from him and he appears to be becoming more confident in using his size to his advantage ... He has great puck skills and a big shot, so it's disappointing to me that Coach Killer doesn't have him out there gaining experience on the PP."
• Brian Lashoff — "He enters the offensive zone effortlessly, and does a good job running the point on the powerplay, although I'd like to see him move around a little more as I found him to be a little stiff at the point."

Related:
Thoughts on Kingston from February 15 (Brock Otten, OHL Prospects)

Fronts: Now that was a Super Sunday

Sunday was a good one for a follower of the whole durned human comedy which is the Kingston Frontenacs. They owned the Ottawa 67's in an 8-6 win, while their no-account owner and GM got owned by the out-of-town media.

In between periods, coach Doug Gilmour had a sort of cryptic, kind of cocky response to question about the team's appearance before Kingston city council about its (wink) marketing plan. "It was all a miscommunication," he told Rogers TV, breaking eye contact with the interviewer. "And something that, uh, you know we – we have a lot of pride (in) how we want to build this team and the fan support and everything else that we had. So, uh, we stated our case. It was easy. It's over with. It will never happen again." (Emphasis mine. This is a team which has still yet to win two games in a row all season.)

Meantime, the out-of-town media went to town on owner Doug Springer and ceremonial GM-for-life Larry Mavety for not taking questions from Kingston city council last week. Ed Hand, the host, wouldn't even let Lee Versage hedge one bit, saying, "It doesn't look good. The owner should have been there and the general manager should have been there answering the questions – and they weren't."

Versage added, "I thought, unfair to put those two guys (Gilmour and marketing director Jeff Stilwell) in that situation ... The owner and the general manager, they kind of weren’t there and deflected it off.

"It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that the owner and the general manager should have been there and they’re trotting out the marketing guy and the coach because he's a big name," Versage added a few moments later.



It is not necessary to reiterate the argument about Springer and Mavety that have been made here since the tailend of the 2006-07 season. It is hilarious to see announcers in another OHL market criticize the owner and GM unaccountable, and Sunaya Sapurji of Loose Pucks call Kingston "the capital of OHL crazytown."

There is a phenomena involved when one's hometown junior hockey club is cursed with tragically bad management. It is like one has to wait until they're playing for pride before he's able to abandon himself to cheering for them. Fortunately for a Frontenacs fan, that point arrived before the official start of winter this season. It was obvious by late November that all that was at stake was how high their draft position would be (no worse than No. 2) and how many season-ticket holders they will lose once it became known Mavety will be back. At least Gilmour said "it wouldn't happen again" with respect to being frog-marched in front of city council.

In other words, watching Sunday's game from seats behind the Frontenacs bench was so choice. It started well, with rooie Erik Gudbranson beating two forecheckers to launch a scoring rush for the first goal. It was capped with the Limestone City's Light Brigade scoring five goals in the third period to send Ottawans home crabby. Ethan Werek was all over the ice and was rightly named the first star despite having only two points, albeit one of them coming on the go-ahead goal with 4:01 left in the game. Big defenceman Taylor Doherty delivered some huge hits and Mavric Parks, even though he gave up six goals, made some huge saves to keep his team in the hunt after it went down 3-1 early in the second period.

The afternoon was catered to Kingston. Ottawa had only 10 forwards and was playing its third game in three days. The goal which tied the game 5-5 in the third period came about thanks to a chintzy delay-of-game penalty when an Ottawa defenceman flipped the puck over the low glass, putting Kingston on a 5-on-3 power play.

That was just details. It was one of those games where both teams went up and down for 60 minutes and pretty much yielded to the flow of the game. It was nice, for lack of a better word, to see your hometown team lighting it up, as was the case in December when Kingston blew out the 67's 7-3 at the Civic Centre, also on a Sunday afternoon. (From the strange but true files, both of Kingston's highest-scoring games this season have come with yours truly in attendance.) It made someone prone to overthinking banish any thoughts of Doug Springer and Larry Mavety for 2½ hours, which you readers will know is saying something.

It has 475 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Related:
Cuma out, 67's fall to Fronts (Chris Stevenson, Sun Media)

With the Fronts, the 401's a highway to the crazy zone

Taking a cue from Sunaya Sapurji at Loose Pucks, one would expect to see Rod Serling's ghost host the next Kingston Frontenacs telecast on TV Cogeco, instead of Kinger.

There are some major media outlets starting to echo the popular opinion that, quoth Sapurji, "when did Kingston become the capital of OHL Crazytown?" She also threw in a reference to the Twilight Zone, which was awesometacular.

Serling's catchphrase, "Submitted for your approval," is obviously lost on Frontenacs owner Doug Springer (left in photo, obviously). The movie/TV quote which comes closest to summing up Springer's tenure in Kingston is, "You'll get nothing, and like it!" a la the Ted Knight character in Caddyshack. Anyway, pent-up anger subliminated through cheap references aside, there is a growing clamour that something is rotten with the state of hockey in K-town. Mike Koreen, sports ed. at the hometown Whig-Standard, also started beating one of Kinger's favourite drums: What's going to happen to the team's season-ticket base, especially, as Springer told Koreen, "there's no reason to think otherwise" that GM-for-life Larry Mavety is going to return next season?

At least these questions are being asked by those with a larger forum. It will not help Kingston win any more games or achieve its first two-game win streak, in Game 50 of the season, tonight when it faces the Brampton Battalion, a very strong team. It won't cause Springer to smarten up and it will not bring fans back in the hometown, but at least it's getting harder to avoid the tough questions. Here's the best from Koreen and Sapurji, noting that the spoken word folk such as Kinger, Tim Cunningham and Mark Potter at TV Cogeco were early adopters:

Sapurji, Loose Pucks: if a team's owner isn't a qualified enough expert to talk about his own team, then maybe he isn't qualified enough to own the team?

Koreen, The Whig: The team is not going to have an easy time convincing some of its season ticket holders to renew next season, which could cause further attendance concerns at the beginning of next season. Expectations were high this year after Springer came out and said he expected the team to challenge for a top-four spot in the conference.

Those are welcome words to read, but not as welcome as "Frontenacs up for sale." It's a start. Kingston will continue to be the town that dreaded sundown, but only when the Springer Frontenacs have a home game that night.

(Ethan Werek, by the way, didn't look out of place in the OHL All-Star Game last night, scoring a goal as he and five Belleville Bulls skated for the winning East team. It follows that he wouldn't look out of place if coach Doug Gilmour put him in a shootout.)

It has been 471 days since Doug Springer said he would do "whatever it takes" to bring Kingston a winner. The worst part is we still don't know who stole the strawberries.





Related:
Fronts developing an identity: Gudbranson (Doug Graham, Kingston Whig-Standard)
What a waste of time; City council's grilling of Fronts achieved nothing (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)
K-Town moves into Twilight Zone (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)

Fronts: The great Limestone City gong show

Doug Springer no doubt figures he should get credit just for showing up.

Poor leaders don't die, they just snake away. Springer, whom the Kingston Frontenacs belong to in deed but never in the way they belong to fans, blew a chance to prove he's better than most kinds of dirt (not that fancy store-bought kind; that stuff's loaded with nutrients). It was the momentous occasion when the Frontenacs brain trust went before city council to answer for the team sucking out loud not having a successful marketing plan to draw fans to the Kingston Ratepayer Centre.

Surely the chief cook and bottle-washer would have the couth to take questions from the duly elected representatives of the city which built a $43-million toy for him to play with (and perhaps run into the ground so he could scoop it up for pennies on the dollar, like the Blue Jays did with the former Skydome).

Surely, you jest. Springer made it clear he would not take questions, not now, not ever. Save Our Kingston Frontenacs sets the scene very well:

"Springer appeared only to introduce Jeff Stilwell and The Manchurian Coach (Doug Gilmour -- ed.). He instructed councillors to direct their questions to 'the two experts that are most qualified.' A convenient way to avoid accountability; always the top item in Springsy's repertoire. What’s he afraid of, anyway?"

Somehow, "the two experts that are most qualified" are a rookie coach with five wins in 26 games and the franchise's resident Waylon Smithers/Bob Cratchit (poor Jeff Stilwell is so overworked that he deserves two pop-culture references).

It meant Doug Gilmour had to pull on his economist hat to answer questions about the cost of parking at the arena. What would Gilmour know about parking? He's the coach; he's in the building when people are pulling into the lots. It was a gong show, exactly what Springer wanted.

One keeps hoping that Springer, one of these days, will wake up. At least he ended up having to admit, ipso facto, that neither he nor GM-for-life Larry Mavety (who was, we were told, off at a league meeting) are homogenously unqualified to speak to why their team has not won a playoff series since 1998, when they have been the two constants in the organization across that entire span. Also, in the chain of command, if the GM was indisposed because he was attending a meeting, wouldn't it fall to the assistant GM to take his place? Assistant coach Tony Cimellaro, who's outlasted several head coaches, has that title, but clearly it's only a title.



It's quite a contrast between Doug Gilmour last night and the Doug Gilmour who was feted by the Toronto Maple Leafs and Hockey Night in Canada 72 hours earlier. Please make note of how he reaches up and scratches his face right when he says, "Doug," referring to Springer (40-second mark). That seems to be his tell.





You have to love the "let's not make excuses for Mav" line. People have been making excuses for Mavety for only the last 11 seasons.

Gilmour also said, "The trades that have been made, I did, so don't blame them, it was me." That was pretty shrewd, since it cut off the ill-informed councillors from asking about the moves made before Gilmour was hired, such as releasing team leader Kyle Bochek, trading for a player who had moved up to the AHL, or having almost nothing to show for the December 2007 trade of Cory Emmerton, save for rookie Charles Sarault. Please bear in mind that was only in the 12 months immediately before Gilmour's hire. There is so much more.

Then there was Stilwell, a good man caught in a corrupt system, enduring a grilling from city councillor Vicki "Hellraiser" Schmolka (Save The Fronts' splendid sobriquet), the one it-getter on council. The only other exception was Rob Matheson, who asked Gilmour pointedly what the Frontenacs plan to do to get top prospects to report to the club. Gilmour didn't have an answer, which is pretty glaring when the No. 1-ranked prospect for the OHL draft, defenceman Scott Harrington, is from Kingston.



Long post made short, Springer, the flourishing miserably fop got his farce. No one really believes he's lower than dirt and he had no legal obligation to explain himself, since a lot of what the politicians are doing in Kingston amounts to closing the barn door after the cows got out. Morally, ethically and professionally, he owed it to people to take questions and explain,

It was a sham and that is a shame. It just goes to show how it never changes with the Kingston Frontenacs. The franchise's hard-done-by fanbase had a rare good 24-48 hours last weekend, between the underutilized Ethan Werek scoring the game-winner in the dying seconds to knock off John Tavares and the London Knights and the ceremonies for Gilmour in Toronto. (Mark Potter of TV Cogeco had a killer line, saying Werek had to find a way to score, since he probably wasn't going to get a spot in a shootout. Incidentally, three of Gilmour's five coaching wins have been by a goal and Werek has scored or set-up the game-winning goal in all three.)

It all turned to mud on Tuesday. It's comical how it reverts to form the very second the national media stop paying attention to Gilmour. This is what Springer wanted, though. He is there, always, even when he doesn't want to be there.

You'd end with "damn him," but you can't damn someone who, as an OHL owner, lacks a conscience, couth or fully functioning brain. Springer might be able to if he wanted to, but that's clearly not in his interest.

It has been 470 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to make Kingston a top team.

Fronts: Murphy's Law, Werek and Dougie's plausible deniability

It's a pretty nice little Saturday in terms of Kingston-related hockey stories — anything to avoid that whole "nine wins in 45 games" unpleasantness with the Springer Frontenacs.

Mike Koreen hit one out of the park with a profile on the pride of Inverary, Belleville Bulls goalie Mike Murphy. Damien Cox in the Toronto Star has a very nice piece on the Manchurian Coach, Doug Gilmour.

Meantime, it was noted last week Ethan Werek's draft status with the NHL's Central Scouting Bureau (43rd-ranked North American skater) was perhaps more of a reflection on the Fronts organization. Werek showed well during the CHL Top Prospects Game this week. Today, the the Frontenacs centre was praised as "sleeper pick"by Shane Malloy, who hosts Hockey Prospects Radio on NHL Home Ice (XM Radio 204).

Malloy noted (loose paraphrasing), "If I'm a NHL team, I'm taking him early. He's a player who displays a lot of intelligence, with our without the puck. He has very high hockey sense. I think he'll be a solid second-line centre.

A few moments later, Malloy added, "One more thing about Ethan Werek. He's a 17-year-old who was scheduled to go to Boston University before he decided to play in Kingston for Doug Gilmour. (Ed.'s note: Larry Mavety was still the coach in September — so Werek is really smart.) He graduated from high school a year early, he's taking business at Queen's University, and Queen's is a very prestigious university. That's the kind of intelligence we're talking about."

Getting back to Gilmour, it seems like Dougie! is going along by rote. Every item in the media about him coaching seems to have some quote along the lines of what he told Cox:

I didn't know the team, I didn't know the league ... It's been a tough learning curve. I've enjoyed it, as much as it has been painful at times to see the players so frustrated. They all want to take the next step. I'm here to teach these kids how to work."

The niggling little concern is that when every time Gilmour says, "I didn't know the league," it comes off, at least to paranoics who overthink these things, as him giving himself an out from Kingston — plausible deniability, in political argot. It's like how you say something because you're not ready to admit or face the truth.

Gilmour's hockey sense is rubbing off on the Fronts after The Royal Mavesty's disastrous coaching stint (Larry Mavety seems to taken the old Chinese table-tennis axiom that "a coach is best who coaches least," a little too literally). Sam from from The Canadian Stretford End noted in a comment last night that Gilmour, during last night's come-from-ahead 5-3 loss to — wait for it — Belleville, "was literally engineering the power play from the bench. He was just pointing to every player, then where they should be standing. It looked like a coach teaching an eight year old team how to position yourself on a power play. The worst part was the Doug was right in doing so."

It would asinine ass-talkery to doubt Gilmour's sincerity when he says he's committed to coach in Kingston next season.

Meantime, the gang at Fronts Talk have that last night, the Frontenacs had Special Olympics figure skater slated to perform and messed up his music. Apparently, they also had a ceremony for Belleville's P.K. Subban, the two-time Canadian world junior standout, but owner Doug Springer opted to not to come on the ice, since he's been booed during the last two pregame ceremonies (for long-time trainer Len Coyle and radio voice Jim Gilchrist).

Meantime, the Fronts try to break into double-digits in the win column tomorrow at 2 p.m. vs. Saginaw. Fun, fun.

Related:
Goalie a rising star ... and that's no Bull (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)
Gilmour has come full circle (Damien Cox, Toronto Star)

Heartily endorsing this event and/or product: XMp3 portable satellite radio

Astute readers might have noticed the odd reference to XM radio over the past few weeks.

This is long overdue in posting, but long story short, a marketing company hooked me up with the new XMp3 portable satellite radio a few weeks ago. From here through Jan. 31, they're on for $199 (they retail for $279), and they'll throw in a $50 programming credit, which will cover the first three months, and a two-gig SD card. It works out to savings of $150. Just click through:

www.xmradio.ca/xmp3offer

It's a XM Radio you can actually take with you as you're walking down the street or using public transit (wform calls for a review.

Sports programming: Obviously, this is where the big payoff comes for someone who is sports-minded. XM has the home team broadcast of every NBA and NHL game, along with college basketball and football from the Big East, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast (ACC) and Southeastern (SEC) conferences. It helps break one's dependency on hoping that there's a good college basketball game available on one of your cable channels early on a Saturday afternoon. It's a lot cheaper than buying a specialty package in order to watch an occasional college game, such as the Syracuse Orange's 19-point rout over Notre Dame today.

MLB Home Plate and NHL Home Ice each offer a very good alternative to over-the-air channels, which are aimed more at a general interest. The baseball channel is manna at this point in the calendar, when most over-the-air channels in Canada might go a whole week without talking about baseball in any depth. It's a breath of fresh air to hear a host use a term like "AAAA player," assuming listeners know what that means.

Former Blue Jays catcher and TSN/ESPN analyst Buck Martinez hosts in the late morning slot; it's great just to hear Buck again. The afternoon show, Baseball Beat with Charley Steiner, has baseball writers from throughout the States. (Update: Unfortunately, Steiner's show has been cancelled, but it could always be resurrected.)

Home Plate could stand to improve in the type of analysis. It is high time someone did a baseball show that embraced more sophisticated, Bill James-style analysis. It would be a natural for something that's aimed at a niche audience.

NHL Home Ice is also better than advertised. It's a reflex to slag anything that comes from the big brains at BettmanCo., but it provides a pretty good survey of what's going on in in the game. Hockey Prospects Radio, a Saturday show with Shane Malloy, is a good offering. Just today, they were talking about Kingston Frontenacs centre Ethan Werek being a "sleeper pick" in the NHL draft.

As for live games, XM breaks the monotony of listening to the same commentators game after game (in the case of a certain Ottawa team, it also means getting a refreshingly honest take on the team's state of affairs).

Music: It must be a sign of creeping middle-ageness. The music channels probably need to go deeper in their song catalogs; it seems like there is a lot of repetitiveness within each one, but that can mitigated if you expand your listening range to several genres/styles. I'm veerly sharply toward old-fartism

Canadian music selections, save for the artists who really hit it big in the U.S. (Neil Young, Nelly Furtado) can be few and farther between, although The Band's Acadian Driftwood came on at the perfect time last night. It was followed by the late, great Warren Zevon's Carmelita, so you can imagine where I was at that point.

Favourites include Classic Vinyl (Channel 46), especially late at night, and XMU, which is more college rock.

Bottom line: XM costs a lot less than digital cable. It's better than most of commercial radio and could even be considered as a reasonable alternative to cable TV, especially as streaming picks up in the next few years. It's worth looking into. Thanks again to the company who hooked us up.

Fronts: What are the prospects for new ownership?

The latest NHL draft ratings really put the lie to Springer Frontenacs GM-for-life Larry Mavety's claims about being such a great place to get exposure.

Forward Ethan Werek's and defenceman Taylor Doherty's stocks have each fallen, to Nos. 43 and 71 among North American skaters. Funny how that would happen with both draft-worthy 17-year-old in an organization helmed by unaccountable owner Doug Springer, Mavety and their Manchurian Coach, Doug Gilmour.

The spin when Werek reported to Kingston this fall instead of decamping to the USHL for a season before going on to Boston University was that that league was not very good. Others theorized he would get more exposure for the draft by playing in the OHL. Well, after a half-season with the Springer Frontenacs, Werek is ranked below five skaters from the USHL including Alex Chiasson, who committed to Boston University after Werek told the Terriers, thanks but no thanks.

There is no disrespect intended to either Werek or Doherty, who are hopefully destined for better and brighter days after toiling for the franchise with the worst record in the 60-team Canadian Hockey League. (When the QMJHL's Val-D'Or Foreurs won Friday, that left Kingston as the only team in the three major junior leagues that has yet to win 10 games this season.)

It goes double for Werek, who has had to suffer constant line shuffling, being bypassed for a defenceman in a shootout one day after he scored both goals in a 2-1 victory and having the "C" taken off his sweater after wearing it for only one game. The story goes that Springer issued an edict that defenceman Brian Lashoff be made captain. Lashoff (who, to be fair, is supposed to have a bright future) was also picked by Dougie! to take the final shot in the shootout Sunday vs. Niagara while Werek was kept on the bench.

Doherty, meantime, was being pegged as a possible late first-rounder earlier this season. TV Cogeco's Tim Cunningham noted several weeks back on Kinger's radio program, Offsides (Kingston's most listened to hour-long sports show, Friday, 4 p.m., cfrc.ca, 101.9 FM), Doherty's progress has been slower than expected.

Doherty and Werek's slip in the Central Scouting Bureau ratings (which should not be taken as gospel, since every team does their own homework) might betray how people are looking at the great Springer gong show in Kingston. They have probably seen what has happened this season with the two Kingston players taken during the NHL's cattle call in 2008.

Anaheim Ducks draft pick Josh Brittain was jerked around all season before being traded to the Barrie Colts in December (He's still Kingston's leader in goals, six weeks leader, although Werek should overtake him soon). Pittsburgh selection Nathan Moon' has had an up-and-down season. None of this does much for the Frontenacs' already poor reputation for developing players. It is reasonable to wonder what the talk is in hockey circles about Springer's organization. A commenter on Save Our Kingston Frontenacs might have put it best:

"You cannot drop a promising career into Kingston and hope to develop. Had a long chat last night in London with parents of two very good young players in London and both had no interest in Kingston. They would of done anything to avoid the Mav draft and watch their kids not develop properly."

Granted, this entire post is staked on the assumption Springer doesn't want to keep icing a bad team and increase the chance of the K-Rock Centre being a drag on the city of Kingston's finances. That is a big if to contemplate and it might explain why The Royal Mavesty, that "astute hockey man" to quote the owner himself, is being kept around.

It has been 448 days since Doug Springer promised he would do "whatever it takes" to give Kingston fans a winning hockey team.

Related:
Cheering for Gilmour; Frontenacs coach has difficult task ahead of him (Jan Murphy, Kingston Whig-Standard)

Fronts: Call it the Daniel derby , damn it

Young Daniel Catenacci might be seeing a portent of his hockey future this Saturday.

Catenacci, as those of you who get the Sunday Star know, is the class of the "93s," in hockey argot. He is pegged to be the No. 1 pick in the OHL draft, which is the Kingston Frontenacs already have a death grip on. The smooth-skating centre's minor midget team, as it happens, has a game next weekend vs. Greater Kingston, which sports the same name, colours and crest as the city's de facto OHL team.

No doubt the Catenacci camp will do their homework about what awaits them in Kingston. It's even come to the point where this site's commenters are saying the local conspiracy theory is that the Frontenacs, under owner Doug Springer, are tanking so the municipality can't afford to keep paying for the K-Rock Centre and ends up having to sell it, likely for pennies on the dollar. (If that perception is out there, no wonder the actual turnout for Frontenacs games is so low.)

No doubt the Catenacci camp are great people, who will try not to tip their hand about their son's plans at any point before the draft. It's his future. They they have the right of first refusal when it comes to where Daniel will play hockey. The Hockey News reported several weeks ago -- when the Frontenacs finishing dead last did not seem like an inevitability -- that Catenacci was hoping to go the OHL route instead of the NCAA (one of his linemates with his midget team is already committed to play at the University of Maine).

It wasn't tied to Kingston story then, since there was still hope they would not be the worst team in the league. After all, Springer said the Frontenacs' goal was to finish in the top four of the OHL's Eastern Conference. There was, and is, no reason to doubt him -- after all, he didn't say which year -- outside of the fact the Frontenacs, with tonight's 5-2 loss in Oshawa, have won only 39% of their games since he and GM-for-life Larry Mavety came together to form the franchise's share-a-brain trust in a decade ago.

(The Frontenacs since Springer became owner, are 296-374-82 counting playoffs. That works out to a .448 winning percentage, yet there's never been, far as anyone can tell, any urgency to make any changes in the organization's hierarchy, namely the general mangler.)

There is a chance to have some fun with this, because in the words of David Letterman, "I just like causin' trouble." The cynics might already be scoffing that it will be a frosty Friday in July when a player who's supposed to be this good reports to such a ramshackle franchise, but the Frontenacs' saving grace is players such as Ethan Werek and Ottawa's own Erik Gudbranson (who earned a gold medal at the World Under-17s tonight, well done) who just need to be in the OHL to help their draft status and improve their bargaining power when they sign their first pro contract. Those kinds of players are too few and far between for one team to have 10 or 12 of them, even if they are the London Knights.

Anyway, the choice here is to call it the Daniel derby, although some rabblerousers were suggesting Crap for Catenacci, which is a bit rude to good boy from a good family. There will be plenty of time to talk about this, since the Frontenacs are 11 points clear of the next-worst team in the OHL. The marketing practically writes itself --he was born in '93! Give him Dougie Gilmour's old number!

Related:
Catenacci a powerhouse in 'sixth gear' (Lois Kalchman, Toronto Star)

Fronts: Rejected and vindicated all at once

There is more Doug -- uh, dough -- flying out the windows of the K-Rock Centre.

The Springer Frontenacs have lost out on local talent Brock Higgs, play college hockey at Canisius College, according to a reliable source, Chris Heisenberg. What happened to teenage players wanting to bask in the star power of the Manchurian Coach, Doug Gilmour? That is so mid-November 2008, apparently.

Higgs, a 16-year-old forward, has been lighting it up with the city's winning junior hockey team, the Provincial Junior A circuit's Kingston Voyageurs. Far be it to suggest, of course, that a player from the Limestone City would have ever seen or heard anything that would make him not want to lace up for the Frontenacs, who drafted him last spring, instead of working toward a degree at a respected American university. A mere three weeks ago, Nov. 25, he told the local paper, "I've got time to make that decision" whether to go the major junior or U.S. college hockey route.

Suffice to say, one could conclude past three weeks of the Dougie! Experiment have been enough for the Higgs camp to make up its mind. He was a fifth-round pick in the annual crapshoot known as the OHL priority selection, but as the same above-linked article noted, he was putting up numbers similar to what Jordan Mayer put up for the Vees last season. Mayer is now a contributor with the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors, who funny you should mention this, routed Kingston 7-4 on Sunday. Higgs wasn't going to be a superstar, but he certainly could have helped, and it never hurts to have a local player in the lineup.

Of course, pointing this out is just unfair to Doug Springer and GM-for-life Larry Mavety. Just because they drafted a local player and he's committing to a NCAA program at least a year before he has to is by no means a commentary on the way they're running the organization. It's all just a massive coincidence.

Sorry for the multiple posts on the Frontenacs brain trust. Seeing as Limestoners Jamie Arniel and Taylor Hall did not make the final cut for the Canadian world junior team, it seemed like everyone could use a laugh.

Fronts: This is a holiday kiss, you Doug!

Josh Brittain has one hell of a tell.

The non-verbal cue that the ex-Kingston Frontenac gave near the tailend during a post-game interview with our own Tyler King on Friday is a lingering image from an all-time embarrassing weekend for Frontenacs owner Doug Springer. This presumes Springer, whom Save The Fronts has christened, "Doug Market Square," has any shame.

The latest debacle began with news the city of Kingston, which is in tough economically like most Ontario cities, is forking out a $600,000 "municipal subsidy" to the K-Rock Centre to make up the shortfall caused mostly by the Frontenacs' sluggish ticket sales. Springer's buddy, Kingston Mayor Harvey Rosen, added that the city is expecting even less revenue from Fronts ticket sales in 2009. As Kinger pointed out on his radio show (which is available for download):

"You're basically being forced to buy Frontenacs tickets because the city is taking your tax dollars and shovelling it over to make up for the fact that nobody's buying Frontenacs tickets. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't."

That is taxation without representation. Taxes aren't being spent on what they should be going to and Kingstonians no longer have a team they are proud to have representing them. Far be it to suggest that a group of citizens should toss Springer and GM-for-life Larry Mavety into the harbour, or that a journalist should take off his shoes and throw them at Springer.

Springer's comeuppance was capped off with an 0-for-3 weekend, where the Fronts were outscored 17-7 and put themselves on pace for the lowest win total in franchise history. Word has also spread that they lost a top local player whom they drafted last season, 16-year-old forward Brock Higgs, who's elected to play college hockey at Canisius College.

To sum up to this point, they are in last place. They can't get a local talent to play for them. The city is throwing taxpayers' money at them.

Kingston needed a new arena like in 1980, but Springer has acted like a spoiled brat with his new $43-million-plus toy, reaffirming that he is, as TV Cogeco's Mark Potter put it a few weeks ago, the worst owner in the Ontario Hockey League. Teams go through lean times. Twenty-one seasons ago, the Canadians lost 28 games in a row. It is hard to imagine one that does it with such an air of cluelessness coming from the owner and The Royal Mavesty, who some wags have labelled as the owner's "pet dinosaur."

The scene at the K-Rock Centre Friday, when the Fronts lost 7-2 to the Barrie Colts, was an eye-opener for a first-time visitor. The K-Rock Pot gives off the vibe of one of those monstrous movie theatres set down next to a bunch of big-box stores. It is very comfortable, but there's no sense of history or shared experience, which is shameful, given Kingston's hockey history. How about huge lithographs of Kingston hockey legends -- Don Cherry, Kirk Muller, Gilmour, Ken Linseman, Jayna Hefford, Alyn McCauley, Jay McKee, Bill and Bun Cook, Fred O'Donnell, Jim Dorey, to cover those bare walls? The Ottawa Senators have the sweaters of area junior and minor hockey teams hanging in the 100-level concourse of Scotiabank Place, which does a great job of creating the vibe that it's a regional team and people who enter are part of something larger than themselves. At the K-Rock Centre, you're just getting the appearance that the team is Springer's play toy, or just another part of his business portfolio, a loss leader (which makes his periodic pronouncements of "whatever it takes" even more bile-raising).

There couldn't have been more than 1,700 people there (and even that's a couple hundred on the generous side) to watch the Fronts get hammered 7-2 by the Colts, with two of those goals coming from Brittain. It was Teddy Bear Toss night, so after Brittain got his second goal, a few fans tossed out stuffed animals. There's something about following hockey in Kingston that cultivates a sense of humour.

Anyway, so at the end of the game, Kinger had Brittain, the game's first star, for an interview at rinkside. A seasoned police interrogator -- the very kind the Kingston Police can't afford since the city cut money out of its budget and gave it to the K-Rock Centre -- or a psychologist could have a field day Brittain's non-verbal communcation. It's right at the 1:54-1:56 mark, after Kinger asks, "Final question for you: What do you think is the thing you're going to miss the most about being a Kingston Frontenac?"



As Brittain told Kinger and the TV Cogeco audience what he missed most about playing for the Fronts -- "I don't know, that’s a tough one. I, uh, can’t come up with anything" (which was telling enough) -- he reached up with his right hand and scratched his face.

Granted, it might not mean anything, but gestures like that can be indicative of when someone would rather not tell the whole truth. Brittain certainly has had his fill of having to be the teenage diplomat when it comes to his time with the Frontenacs, not wanting to say anything the least bit controversial that might get him labelled as having a bad attitude.

(As an aside, if there was any attitude problem, the Frontenacs created their own problem with the lack of boundaries. Brittain was a rookie in the 2007 playoffs when Mavety brokered a deal that let Bobby Hughes come back to the team after he quit between the third period and overtime of a playoff game.)

Peter Stevens, who went to Barrie with Brittain in that Dec. 3 trade, played it much the same way as Brittain when Kinger did a phone interview with him on the radio. Stevens, whose trade has meant it's open season on skilled players such as 17-year-old defenceman Taylor Doherty, simply called the Colts more "hockey-minded" -- so what are Kingston's minds on? -- and saying that he would miss the city itself.

The positives on the ice are fewer and farther between for the Frontenacs (7-22-6 with one game left before the holidays). Ethan Werek, amid all the losing, is at least demonstrating a scoring touch and perhaps should be the next player to take a turn wearing the captain's "C" under the Manchurian Coach, Dougie!. Werek accounted for three of the Fronts seven goals this weekend. Three of the other four came off the sticks off Werek's wingers, Andris Dzerins and Bobby Mignardi.

The Fronts had four different players score goals this weekend. Mississauga St. Michael's had six today in its 7-4 win over Kingston (the fourth time in six games that the Fronts have given up at least seven goals, ironically after they traded their best forward).

That is pretty thin gruel, especially given the success of the rival Belleville Bulls and the turnaround of the three other also-rans from last season. One can go on and on rhyming off facts and figures like an idiot savant, and what the hell, let's do that:

• Second straight season with fewer than 10 wins before the holiday break;
• No back-to-back wins yet this season;
• The three non-playoff teams of last season, Erie, Owen Sound and Sudbury, are all contending for the playoffs;
• Dead last in the 20-team in OHL on the power play and penalty kill;
  
• Jérôme Dupont's record since taking over the Gatineau Olympiques: 9-5-1 (Dupont lobbyed for the Kingston job);
  
• Doug Gilmour's record as Frontenacs coach: 2-9-1 (matching Bruce Cassidy's mark before he got the ax in 2007);
• Seven wins in 35 games puts the Fronts behind the franchise record-low win total of the '87-88 Canadians, who won 14 of 66 games (and promptly had a new owner and new name the next season);
  

There's a word for this and it starts and ends the same way as the owner's name, with the letter D and the suffix er -- disaster. Here's hoping that in the New Year, the right people, at City Hall and in the media, start asking questions about how it went so wrong down in K-Town -- and whether it's too late to undo the damage done over the past decade.

Something is rotten. It's as evident as what Josh Brittain thought better of saying Friday night.

(Small mea culpa: George Lovatsis, of course, came over in an early-season trade, meaning that he didn't have to make the team in training camp, as some Kinger's honorary co-host -- me -- put it Friday. Granted, you could say he had to make the Barrie Colts in training camp and ultimately didn't, which is how he ended up in Kingston. A goof is a goof.

Last, but not least, the Frontenacs will honour play-by-play man on Jim Gilchrist on Wednesday. Gilchrist recently called his 2,000th OHL game.)

Related:
Arena profits way off, city told; Council eyeing reserves to offset shortcomings (Rob Tripp, Kingston Whig-Standard)
Brotherly love; Sibling's cancer puts hockey into perspective for Gudbranson (Doug Graham, Kingston Whig-Standard)