Knock 'em dead, Kinger

Once in a great while, those who Kingston sports near and dear are privileged to know a broadcast talent so extraordinary he becomes part of our shared heritage.

Nineteen seventy-eight: Chris Cuthbert broadcasts football games for CFRC 101.9 during the Golden Gaels' run to the Vanier Cup and goes on to a career at TSN.

Nineteen seventy-nine: Rod Smith enrolls at Queen's to play football for the Golden Gaels and goes on to a career at TSN.

Then for a long time, nothing happened. Until about 2007. On a Saturday afternoon of no particular distinction, yours truly happened to come across the dulcet tones of Tyler King calling a Queen's hockey game on CFRC. The result of that game has been forgotten by everyone save the players and coaches. What endures is that some typical insecure angry young man comment that I made on OOLF prompted Tyler, not that he needed the help, to e-mail asking for any tips to he could use to improve as broadcaster.

There was probably little I could impart since I work in a medium blessed with a backspace key, to be honest, but that hardly matters. What matters is that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, one that has enriched the person who's the older of the two by a decade more than the younger individual. You are probably acquainted with either Tyler or me personally and professionally. If you are devoted or bored enough to be checking this long-dormant site tonight you probably know this is about sending Tyler, AKA Kinger, AKA Cookie, AKA Miguel Sanchez, off well as he wings west. Monday, he'll begin what seems like a great opportunity, working for Rogers Radio as a newscaster and hockey play-by-play announcer calling the action for the Fort McMurray Oil Barons of the Alberta Junior Hockey League.

No one gets that an opportunity while still on the cool side of 25 without working so hard for it that people feel compelled to open doors, like the way then-Kingston Kimco Voyageurs owner Gregg Rosen and coach Evan Robinson, my fellow Napaneean, did in 2010 when they agreed to let Tyler set up an Internet broadcast of their playoff games, which was without precedent for the Junior A team.

It has been and will continue to be a trip to have a rinkside seat to watch Tyler work on his craft, refusing to take the easy way out on any task, even though many do while trying to gain or keep a foothold in the tough-to-crack broadcasting field.

No doubt this reads like a total tire-pumping. That is not needed. Tyler has very fully developed ego integrity. It just bears putting in words that without our association, borne from a random CFRC/Queen's/Kingston/sports connection, the past few years would not have been as fun. Knowing Kinger was a conduit for keeping somewhat in tune with the Kingston sportscape. It meant having someone to bounce lines off, someone who could always be meta when it came to having a germane sitcom reference to break out with wit and impeccable timing. It also meant having someone to down a few beers with after the seminal Saturday in November 2009 when the Big Yellow Guys took down Laval. Tyler should know that I feel fortunate to have witnessed his career changes, I am glad I knew him while my professional set-up changed for the better.

None of that is profound, I know. Hey, the only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share when we're uncool. That's from the Lester Bangs character in Almost Famous. Tyler has never seen that film, no matter how many times I have recommended it.

That's okay, though, since the kid is stubborn-to-a-fault true to himself, like most people who get anywhere in this life. What draws people to Tyler is that he has taken it to heart that being in the media isn't about the events or stories you get to cover on the corporate dime. It's about trying to keep yourself fresh. It's also about considering why the stories matter to the people involved, knowing all the while that understanding will not make you rich, it will win something much more valuable — respect.

By all accounts, Tyler has learned that, lived it and loved it on all of his stops. One mark that someone is capable of bigger and better things is those who effect lasting change before they move up the ladder. Very rarely does someone get to do that in campus media or at one of her/his first jobs. A proof of how good Tyler is the influence he managed to have in Kingston over a short period of time. The aforementioned Vees had never had live play-by-play prior to his arrival. Next season, that will carry on with Allan Etmanski calling the games.

Similarly, lots of young guys have had sports shows on CFRC 101.9 over the years. Most were just the same variation on Here's What's Happening In Sports And Here's What I Think About It — basically Bleacher Report in spoken-word form. Tyler's show, Offsides, grew into much more over its three-year run (interrupted by his stint at Syracuse). Tyler broke news with respect to the Voyageurs and Kingston Frontenacs and kept Queen's Athletics on its toes. Many informed sports fans came to see it as the city's most credible source for sports news.

One hope in writing this is that someone else comes along to fill that void in Kingston before too long. Sports coverage is a niche, nowhere as big in the grand scheme as hard news, but Kingston's dedicated sports fans are not always well-served by either of the city's two old-media outlets. That's not a slam on the hard-working people employed on the editorial side at the Quebecor-owned newspaper and Corus-owned TV station. Far from it. I am just trying to be honest about what everyone working in a newsroom knows but might not say aloud: the wild world of monetized media coverage means there is precious little a mass-audience newscast or newspaper can do for sports fans who want to know more about the teams in their backyard than who won and who lost. Most allow for as much unbridled creativity now as a box factory.

With time, that will change. All it will take a few more young people such as Tyler going out there and pushing the limits until they're the mainstream. Let's hope it happens soonly.

Fronts: Harvey Rosen's big lie — Mem Centre better for RBC Cup than the K-Rock Centre

When you're buying flowers for your mum this Easter weekend, remember that a Rosen should be red (faced).

The Kingston Frontenacs might still be playing if they could shut a team down the way they have stymied the Kingston Voyageurs' RBC Cup bid.

It's a laugh-and-a-half to see the great wool-pull Kingston Mayor Harvey Rosen is engaged in as he tries to justify why the Vees must use the ancient Memorial Centre rather than the newish, costly-ish K-Rock Centre if they earn the right to host the 2012 RBC Cup. "The majority of teams in the Junior A leagues across the country are from smaller towns and they play in smaller arenas." ... "If you put three thousand fans in the K-Rock Centre, which is the most the RBC Cup could hope to draw, it's half full and you feel there's something not quite attractive about what's going on."

The Fronts' forwards should be as good at deflections. The downtown arena is losing money, in an election year, and rather than stand up to Fronts owner Doug Springer, Rosen tries to reverse course. This is a hilarious coming from someone who blamed fans when the Springer Frontenacs were drawing far less than 3,000 fans. He didn't call it "something not quite attractive going on" then. And if spectator support is such a big concern, why was the Clarkson Cup staged at the K-Rock Centre? There's no way a women's game not involving national teams drew anything close to 3,000 people.

It's understandable, admirable even that the Springer Frontenacs have put their foot down, since there is an off-off-off-off-off-off-chance they are still going in next season's OHL playoffs come May 2012. Granted, they are coming off their "best post-season showing" (the local broadsheet's phrasing) in 12 years, since it took them until Game 7 of Round 1 to bow out to Brampton.

Kingston fans and taxpayers deserve a lot better than puffery and half truths. They were told the city needed to splurge on a downtown arena to land big events and are now being told it is ill-suited for staging a big event, and that the RBC Cup is not a big event. Debate the glamour of the RBC Cup all you want, but the money out-of-town teams and their supporters spend is just as good as their major junior counterparts.

The onus isn't totally on Springer, but it's pretty clear who is calling the shots. It is not out of the realm of possibility he's seeing it as win-win if venue issues sink the Vees' bid. The Vees already had to defer it from 2011 to '12, so not to coincide with the Fronts' Hail Mary of a bid for the 2011 Memorial Cup. Some random guy hinted at this two weeks ago:

"Kingston Frontenacs owner Doug Springer will never let another team host a national championship at the K-Rock Centre, his petty fiefdom that he doesn't actually own or operate. You have to keep dates available for that huge playoff run (all the way to the second round!) that he's been promising Kingston since 1998, don't you know.

"In no way is this a suggestion Springer and his Frontenacs ... (are) actively trying to sandbag another Kingston team's bid to land a national tournament ... in no way whatsoever."

The Fronts actually have every right to do so; their 2011-12 season might be a going concern when the RBC Cup comes around in May. And Katrina Bowden might be waiting in my apartment when I come home from work tonight. Perhaps it is not politic, but Rosen should just be honest about the circumstances. It doesn't take King Solomon to see there is a compromise, where the Vees could be prepared to use the K-Rock if it's available. Common sense should prevail, even as it's getting harder to recall that exists, where Kingston and junior hockey is concerned.

Imagine having a state-of-the-art arena sit empty while a national championship takes place across town. No amount of nostalgia for old "hockey barns" will override that embarrassment.

It has been 892 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Hockey hockey hockey: Oakville-Kingston, Game 7 OJAHL final

Tyler King has the call, 7:30 ET:

Free Webcam Chat at Ustream

The King of Kingston hockey: Trenton vs. Vees, Sunday, 2:30!

Tyler King will have the call of Game 5 of the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs' OJAHL second-round playoff series against the Trenton Golden Hawks. Kingston is up 3-1 in the best-of-seven series.

Live video chat by Ustream

Hockey broadcast!

It's kind of last-minute, but Tyler King has the broadcast of the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs' playoff game vs. the Trenton Golden Hawks. Kingston is up 2-0 in a best-of-7 series.

Live Videos by Ustream

Frontenacs show true colours — deep shades of pathetic

Good friend Tyler King was a "bringer of reality" vis-à-vis the Kingston Frontenacs' "less than one per cent" chance of winning the host bid for the 2011 Memorial Cup.



The Fronts tend to have a strong reaction to someone having the audacity to point out straight facts, like that Kingston has not won a playoff series since 1998 and is ninth overall in the OHL and the other shortlisters for are first (Barrie), second (Windsor) and fourth (Mississauga) in the league. For instance, they could Twitter-block him, like they have done with others.

God forbid professional journalists who love Kingston should have any right to give an informed opinion.

Kinger and others didn't ask for this role, but they'll play the part of offering a honest critique of a franchise which believes the media is there to offer a free pass. Meantime, the Frontenacs would have to hand out a lot of free passes to fill the arena for the playoffs.

Frontenacs: All-star game fail falls on feckless Springer

The problem with Doug Springer is if you say the staging of the OHL all-star game was a spectacular flop, he'll only hear the word spectacular.

So, is it worth wasting a beautiful mind pointing out Wednesday night's gong show at the K-Rock Centre was a "no" vote in a referendum on whether Springer and his organization (loose usage) are fit to continue running the Frontenacs? The announced crowd of 3,206 — reversing the first two digits would put you a lot closer to the actual figure — sends the message loud and clear. Were ours a just world, Springer would be starting negotiations to sell the team to Gregg Rosen, who owns the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs.

Rosen, unlike Springer, has shown he knows something about icing a winning team. Fans can also lean in to embrace the Vees without peeking to look out for the next knife in the back.

There's no equivocation, no hair-split. It was a sad sight. The inflated attendance figure was only 60 per cent of the K-Rock Centre's capacity. Host teams for an OHL all-star game typically fill, at minimum, 85% of their seats. This is from a city which was a Hockeyville finalist not too long ago and has close to the highest attendance in CIS football, outdrawing larger cities.

It also fell short of the original attendance target (3,500 per game) set by Kingston city council when the Frontenacs moved into their taxpayer-provided puck palace two years ago. It's another level of fail when you factor in that it's Feb Fest week in Kingston, which brings people out of their homes and put thems in a civic-minded spirit than they would otherwise be in during the depths of winter. An anchor on Rogers Sportsnet wondered kiddingly if someone had pulled a fire alarm at one end, where the seats were completely empty. Wow, was it ever wise to emphasis this was a test run for hosting the Memorial Cup.

The only solace is knowing people who follow junior hockey closely are aware it is not the market, or the arena. They understand that withdrawal in disgust is not apathy (assist to Michael Stipe). There were sellouts in Kingston for world junior exhibition games in 2008. The town got on the bandwagon for the Queen's Golden Gaels during their Vanier Cup run and for the Junior A Kingston Voyageurs during their post-season run last spring.

This disaster falls squarely on Springer, who rightly got booed before a ceremonial faceoff.

You can't even say the gloves are off, and not because there is no fighting in an all-star game. They've been off for a while. This is an owner whose franchise looks like a serious threat to make it 12 seasons without winning a playoff series, the longest drought in the Ontario Hockey League. (Oh, every team is entitled to a bad decade.) The promised attendance bump from moving from an old hockey barn, the Memorial Centre, to the spiffy K-Rock Centre, has not materialized.

Any regular reader of Fronts Talk is well-aware there is a lot more wrong with the franchise than right. There is a laundry list of deep-seated concerns about the team's all-around lack of accountability with players' conditioning and discipline (on and off-ice), with giving support to billets who agree to be surrogate family to players, with keeping the arena fan-friendly and meeting media obligations.

(On the last count, two weeks ago after a shutout loss in Ottawa coach Doug Gilmour set a land-speed record to get out of the arena. Then again, a former Toronto Maple Leafs captain would not have much experience dealing with a media scrum.)

Through it all, one wonders what is Springer's deal with holding the Frontenacs hostage. Is it like Rogers Communications' deal with the Toronto Blue Jays, just owning it to own it and maybe eventually you buy the arena and make some real coin? One shudders at that possibility, especially since the price tag would be sure to be a lot less than $43 million.

If that's the long-term plan, then Springer should be big enough to write off any criticisms as sticks and stones. He should not be strong-arming the local media into removing commentators who have spoken critically of the team (trust me, it's happened). It is pretty glaring that the local media consistently punts on using its power to draw attention what is so blatantly obvious. Loose Pucks noted "the half-full building was a topic of discussion" during the OHL skills competition, but you could scarcely hear a critical word from any the media outlets in Kingston.

The Whig-Standard should be about 90-95% off the hook, since it has always dealt with the Doug Springer (and Larry Mavety) problem by high-roading it and providing a model sports section, one that has diverse coverage and doesn't overdose on hockey to the exclusion of amateur, high school and university sports. (Go on their website. Today they've managed to cover the all-star game and Ontario men's curling championship in Napanee and also find space for a feature on a St. Lawrence College basketball player. That's more good hyper-local sports content than some of the former Osprey dailies have in a week.)

Getting back to the point, though, it is well past time to point out Doug Springer has yet again embarrassed the city he purports to represent. This oracle (pretentious, much?) has said little since honestly, it's all in syndication at this point.

From this vantage point, one may only write, "The public perception of Springer seems to have cemented. He can't win in Kingston. The only way out of this mess is a change in ownership" (January 7, 2008) and, "At some point Springer has to figure out that he has stop trying to put a Mercedes-Benz façade on a broken-down beater of an OHL franchise" (June 5, 2009) so many times without seeing those who have a larger bullhorn use theirs.

The Frontenacs have become the kings of empty promises and pathetic spin-doctoring. The optics are loud and clear: Springer doesn't give a fat rat's ass about running a class organization, and neither should you. Good on fans for staying home.

That brings it back to the crux of the Doug Springer problem. His organization will not reason or look in the mirror, or wear its many mistakes with player personnel and promotion. They dropped the ball with the all-star game big time and they'll still act like they did the city a friggin' favour by embarrassing it on national television. If past behaviour is any indication, they and their legion of sycophants, the Springer Suckers, will try to shout down anyone who points this out, typing with two fingers and cap lock key on. (Bring it on, he said, typing from his one-bedroom apartment in Ottawa.)

Meantime, the death knell continues for an OHL market. Springer will never run out of excuses or scapegoats, but the fanbase has run out of patience. Cannot blame them.

It has been 835 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Fronts: Kingston mayor puts the 'gall' in Cha Gheill!

Like Kinger says, a good hockey town supports good hockey.

Someone needs to put that in a memo for Kingston mayor Harvey Rosen, even though it falls under the heading, "I didn't know it was possible not to know that."

It's funny. A quick Google News check reveals His Worship's hypocrisy on the local sports front over the past week. The first match for Rosen is a press release announcing the mayor will be one of the speakers at today's rally honouring the Vanier Cup champion Queen's Golden Gaels (woo-hoo!). The second is from last week where he questioned "why there aren't more bums in the seats" at Kingston Frontenacs games, adding, "Kingston likes to pride itself on being a hockey city. I wonder."

Some would wonder how the mayor in good conscience can attach himself to a winner while expecting fellow sports-likers to support an abject loser such as the Springer Frontenacs, where the bums are in the owner's suite. Frankly, that stinks worse than TSN missing almost the whole first quarter of the Vanier Cup.

The Frontenacs are honouring the Golden Gaels before their game on Friday, as well they should. Some would say it assures people of seeing a great Kingston team at the K-Rock Centre between now and the Junior A Voyageurs hosting the RBC Cup in 2012.

No doubt a few wags this week have made variations on the same joke. Now that the Vees (central Canadian Junior A champions) and Queen's have each won a major championship (woo-hoo!), the Springer Frontenacs had better hurry up and win something. It works on so many levels. It's funny 'cause it's true.

It's also tragic. Everyone knows the Fronts can never win as long as Rosen's little buddy Doug Springer and the Frontenacs owner's pet dinosaur, GM-for-life Larry Mavety, are both around. What are they, sixth in the OHL's Leastern Conference? Do they get a parade for that too, Mr. Mayor, even though anyone with a brain knows sixth place is a garden-variety feat?

Point being, it was all kinds of wrongheaded for Rosen to fault fans instead of turning to the real culprits. As Kinger said on Fronts Talk:

"To imply that the fault lies with the fans for not showing up shows not just a lack of understanding of the real situation, but a condescension towards and contempt for the hockey fans that made his downtown arena idea a possibility.

"How dare he impugn what I will always defend as one of the greatest hockey fan bases in the entire country.

"How dare he say anything but how honoured he is to preside over a city of such hockey intelligence; the birthplace of hockey and home of so many of its greatest historians and appreciators.

"How dare anyone bemoan the unwillingness of this city's working class to shell out money for inflated ticket prices and downright egregious concessions!

"It's not our fault, Mr. Mayor - it's the fault of the plutocrats who control this city, who try to foist never-ending mediocrity on a city that deserves much better, and expect the populace to be grateful that they're giving them time of day.

"People demand better than that because Kingston deserves better than mediocrity.

"It is the consumer's right to decide where his or her money is best spent.

"How can a man like Mr. Rosen, who made his mark as a savvy businessman, not understand the everlasting mantra that the customer is always right?

"You can't shame people into going to hockey games."

That feeling has been there for a long time, so don't be saying this is cynically timed with the Gaels' triumph. Saying so would be half-right, but not how you might think. It took this long since, as a Kingston expat, it seemed better to focus on Queen's playoff run, which embiggened the smallest man (I would know). However, eventually one's face needs a rest from smiling so much. So, you focus on the Fronts, who could make Giada De Laurentiis frown.

The whole truth is you could write this about the Springer Frontenacs pretty much whenever. That makes Rosen's remarks nuttier than a pecan log. How could someone who lives in Kingston be so tone-deaf as to why the populace has tuned out the Fronts? They have the same doofi in charge who got them into this mess. Small wonder only diehards come out to the sterile K-Rock Centre.

It was fair to give it a chance at the start of the season and steer clear of snap judgments. The Fronts also lost their best NHL draft-eligible defenceman, Erik Gudbranson, for an extended period. That bought them a mulligan.

However, the progress that was promised has not materialized. The above-linked Kingston Whig-Standard article, written by a good and honourable reporter who is not normally on the sports beat, says the team is "hovering around .500." In fact, the Frontenacs have only 11 regulation-time wins in 30 games, a paltry total in such a weak conference. (Two of their 13 total victories have come in 4-on-4 overtime, which is not a good assessment of a team's true talent).

Of course, Springer also wants to host the Memorial Cup next season because the Frontenacs are so competitive with those Western Conference teams. They only got outscored 29-12 during a five-game stretch vs. the West; each of the four losses was by at least three goals.

There are trace elements of Doug Gilmour's influence on the ice. For instance, the players actually seem to have a screw's clue about defensive positioning, which no Mavety-led team has been accused of since 1990.

It all comes back to Springer retaining Mavety, the general mangler. How can Rosen be so willfully blind? Well, he did gave Springer a sweetheart deal on use of the K-Rock Centre. He did sign off on revenue projections most people knew would be unreachable so long as Springer refuses to get the crayon dislodged from his brain, which would give him the 30 missing IQ points he needs to realize his hockey operation is 30 years out-of-date.

You might remember coach "The Trades That Were Made, I Did" Gilmour had to hold out his knuckles to be rapped when the Frontenacs were called before city council last winter over their mediocre record marketing plan. The party line was that it was Gilmour's team with his hand-picked players.

Then their draft looked suspiciously like a Mavety draft. (It's an open secret in OHL circles the Frontenacs are so clueless they actually ask 67's GM Brian Kilrea in Ottawa to make recommendations for their picks.) Then they traded for middling veterans to try to squeeze out a playoff spot in a league that only lets 80% of its teams into the dance. They failed to convince a local talent, Kingston Voyageurs centre Brock Higgs, to cast his lot with them (can't imagine why). Higgs has only been selected for the Canadian Junior Hockey League all-star game and accepted a scholarship to Rensselaer, which is as good at it gets when it comes to getting a Lexus education while playing U.S. college hockey. Remember, he's there for the degree.

(Anonymous apologists will claim Higgs could not help the Frontenacs. This stunning bit of logic ignores he is a comparable player with former Voyageur Mike Farrell, who seems to be helping the Frontenacs.)

It is ugly. Mavety has finger on the button and this man's touch is like iodine on a potato, forever blackening. As Mayor Rosen would say, you wonder if Gilmour is going to stay on once they don't get the Memorial Cup in 2011 (again). You wonder if about the team's commitment after it got waxed 4-1 at home two Sundays ago by a Plymouth team playing its third road game in 2½ games. (The Whalers went from being so weary they couldn't complete a 20-foot pass in the first period to winning easily.)

One would sense it if there was a change of culture around the hockey club. It's not there. As TVCogeco's Mark Potter said last winter, if Larry Mavety survives in Kingston, the OHL will not.

Even more ironically, while Rosen had the gall to call out long-suffering fans, Mavety has been thumbing through The Big Book of Bad Hockey for the right act of ass coverage. His usual move this time of season involves trading a quote-unquote unhappy or underperforming player (whose agent and potential future NHL team want him somewhere where there is actual interest in professional development), on the premise a talent dump will make the team better. This year, that favourite from the playbook is called "The Taylor Doherty."

Last season, it was "The Josh Brittain." Next season, it might be "the Ethan Werek." It doesn't actually stop the franchise from spinning its wheels. It works like a charm in terms of self-preservation and brain-baffling BS.

All that, and Harvey Rosen expects people to show up. Presumably, in the spirit of the late, great Max Jackson's sign-off ("if you can't play a sport, be one!"), Rosen will realize he was way out of bounds to criticize fans. He's a bright enough man to see the difference between the teams in Kingston.

Rosen was at the Vanier Cup. He must have heard people who would know say the Golden Gaels' success flows from their cerebral and classy coaches and permeates the entire program. The spirit emanates from the king. The Frontenacs are stuck with an owner who is a rare combination of arrogant and wrong and a GM who has outlasted his usefulness.

It has been 772 days since Doug Springer promised he would do whatever it takes to bring a winner to Kingston. Who knew Harvey Rosen has needed someone to toss him a clue line for at least that long? C'est la vie, and Cha Gheill!

Six degrees of gruesome Fanelli injury

There's a Kingston connection with the awful story about Ben Fanelli, the Kitchener Rangers rookie defenceman who is in intensive care with skull and facial fractures.

The firsts-thing-first hoping Fanelli has a full recovery (not the same as whether he'll return to competitive hockey). It was not a head shot although it did look like Michael Lianbas, the 20-year-old Erie Otters player, took a good three full strides before hitting Fanelli, who had turned his back to play the puck up the boards behind his own goal.

The odd part is Fanelli went in the fourth round of the OHL draft in May, one round after the Rangers selected forward Keli Grant, a Kingston boy who attends Ernestown Secondary School, where my mother teaches. Mike Koreen, the Kingston Whig-Standard's excellent sports editor, wrote a while back about how Grant's experience this fall "will hit home for those who feel it's tough to force 15-or 16-year-olds to make such an important decision about their athletic future at an early age."

Perhaps that's where the debate is, whether it's necessarily good to force 16-year-olds to skate alongside 20-year-olds. For every player who's ready for it emotionally and physically, there are a few who are not, speaking generally.

The Rangers kept Fanelli instead of Grant to fill out their maximum allotment of three 16-year-old players. Grant ended up being caught up in a numbers game in Kitchener and with his hometown Kingston Kimco Voyageurs Junior A, who are only allowed two 16-year-olds (one of whom is his twin, Kris Grant.) He also lost his NCAA eligibility in the process by playing in an exhibition game with the Rangers.

Needless to say, all of that is a trifle compared to what is ahead for Fanelli and his family. Strange how that works. (Bob McKenzie might have Twitter updates on Fanelli later.)

Fronts: Mike Farrell's beauty goal

Mike Farrell's sick short-handed goal was the lede in the Kingston Whig-Standard's Frontenacs game story on Monday — and it is not hard to see why. It was clearly the greatest moment in amateur or professional sports history, and Kingston history, too, since Brady Olsen was skating for the Queen's Golden Gaels.

Please do not pull a Kinger and point out it is ironic some people cheering for Farrell today just a few weeks ago were claiming Brock Higgs would have been in tough to make the Frontenacs, when Higgs was arguably more effective than Farrell during the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs' soul-stirring, life-affirming playoff run last spring. There is being right and being nice, and that was a nice goal. It's all bygones-be-bygones with the Frontenacs off to a 3-2-0 start (3-0 within the Eastern Conference, although two of those wins were over a suspect Niagara IceDogs teams).

(Clip via the Twitter of Steve Dangle and Puck Daddy.)

Fronts: Clean slate and you're still throwing stones

As Kinger's hero has been wont to say, "Words mean things." Especially when those words are centred, bolded, italicized and put in enlarged type.

"They told me they had a deal with Kingston and would I accept it? I thought about it for a couple of days and said no ... I want to try and go for it in case it's my last year in the OHL."

— Guelph Storm forward Matthew Sisca, on why he turned down a trade to the Kingston Frontenacs

The story is from Monday, but what the hell. Good on the Kingston Whig-Standard for alerting readers to how owner Doug Springer's ramshackle franchise is viewed across the league.

The intent here is not to rip, but to convey that the Frontenacs long ago reached their limit with trading in fallacies. It seems best to head off the hype now rather than after the fact. Making the playoffs in a weak OHL Eastern Conference will not be proof there is a rebuilding program, pure and simple. By the same token, their collection of forwards with Ethan Werek and defencemen with Erik Gudbranson (who is wearing an alternate captain's A for Team Canada at the Ivan Hlinka world under-18 tournament this week in Europe and got a glowing notice in Sports Illustrated) is as good as they have had since 2005-06. Doug Gilmour has shown some promise as a coach.

One would say this is a critical year for the future of major junior hockey in Kingston. It should become a political hot potato if the primary tenant at the city of Kingston's $43-million downtown arena continues to be an also-ran at the box office and in the standings as 2009 becomes 2010. It goes double with an election in November. (Picture Mayor Harvey Rosen saying, "Again? This stupid province.")

Another subpar season will further the perception, as per the Sisca quote, that Kingston is the league's Siberia.

The situation with Brock Higgs is illustrative. Higgs is a Kingstonian who was drafted by the Frontenacs in 2008. Long story short, he elected to play Provincial Junior A across town with Kingston Kimco Voyageurs and go for a NCAA scholarship. His plan is to play at Canisius College in Buffalo, where he can play hockey, get an education and be tip taxi drivers generously.

This is kind of adaptation of a comment left some time ago at the awesome OHL Prospects. It kind of lays out why it is understandable a Kingston prospect would not want to play for his hometown club. Higgs is on NHL Central Scouting's radar screen, but he is no sure thing to get drafted.

It is far from a stunner that Brock Higgs would not jump to play for the Frontenacs. If you'll indulge me...

The player said in June it 'looks like' he is returning to the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs and will go to Canisius in 2010. He is 17 years old with the right to change his mind.

There is the education package if you end up going to a Canadian university after major junior. However, as OHL alum Jason Cassidy explained, it's determined by how high a player was drafted. Higgs was a fifth-rounder.

Meantime, and who knows how much stickiness this has with agents and parents, the Frontenacs are the franchise which was sued by a former player after Larry Mavety tried to deny him his education package. As the player, Brody Todd, told the Toronto Star (Nov. 26, 2006): "I was disgusted how they held this (education package) back from me after playing in the league for five years ... If I hadn't pushed and sued, I likely would have ended up with nothing."

There is a lot of antipathy among the sporting class in Kingston toward the Fronts.

Their owner, Springer, has a reputation for not being accountable to fans. They have not had a playoff series win since he bought the Fronts in the late 1990s, but he refuses to change the general manager. Meantime the city of Kingston, which was just ranked as one of Canada's worst-run cities in a Maclean's magazine report, built a $43-million downtown arena, thus making every Kingston taxpayer a stakeholder in the Frontenacs.

Nevertheless, when the city council tried to cover its butt last winter by demanding the Frontenacs appear at a public meeting to discuss their "marketing plan," (wink, wink), Springer refused to take questions. Instead, he had his PR person and Gilmour (who had been in the league for about 30 games at the point) speak.

It's also telling that whenever players on their way out of town are asked what they'll miss most about Kingston, they invariably pause and say, "The people, the city." It's never the organization.

The Frontenacs have a bad reputation. They need to change the culture, since as of right now, they're not part of the fabric of the community, in the manner of other major junior teams.

People in Kingston are pretty savvy. They know there's no rebuilding taking place as long as Springer interferes in hockey decisions and as long as Gilmour follows in the footsteps of Mavety, simply settling for making the playoffs. The attendance spike they got from Gilmour lasted about one game.

As for Higgs' personal choice, who knows? It could be his family is big on education. The Kingston paper had a feature on Higgs during the Voyageurs' playoff run which noted his older sister goes to Queen's University, a pretty prestigious academic institution.

Canisius is also a first-rate Catholic college. As a school in a border town, it is also sensitive to the academic needs of Canadians. There is a young woman from Ottawa who plays basketball there, Steph MacDonald. She pointed out to the Ottawa Sun two years ago that one of the determining factors in choosing that school was not having to worry about getting her credits accepted if she applied to do a post-graduate degree in Canada.

The OHL is a place to be for a high-end talent who's got a great shot at being drafted at age 18. I'm always coming from the perspective of being a Kingston fan — paraphrasing what Roger Ebert says about writing for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Chicago Sun-Times, the Frontenacs are my team. Doug Springer just happens to own it. It's a childish attachment, I know.

However, a fan has to be clear-eyed. There are a lot of reasons why Higgs would go the NCAA route. The advisers for another Kingston lad, Scott Harrington, made it known before the OHL draft that he did not want to be drafted by the Frontenacs. The "out" the Frontenacs had was that Harrington was not a clear-cut No. 2 overall pick, he was somewhere in the top 5-10 picks, plus they are fairly well-stocked on the back end with Gudbranson, Taylor Doherty and Brian Lashoff.

None of this is cut-and-dried. The situation can change quickly with a young player. If Higgs does report to the Frontenacs, I'll gladly eat my words. How's that for an out clause?

Admittedly, that is inflammatory rhetoric for mid-August, but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Springer set the bar last September when he told play-by-play man Jim Gilchrist during a between-periods interview that the team's goal was "top four" in the East. A season later, they have more talent and a reasonable facsimile of a coach with Gilmour, so why let Springer move the goalposts?

Long post shorter, they should get better. Werek should have a shot at a 40-goal season. Greatbranson will rattle opposing forwards' teeth during his draft year. However, let it be said this franchise is not starting with a clean slate.

It has been 658 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Incidentally, here is what S.I. said about Greatbranson:

"Fast and fearless, Erik Gudbranson captained the Kingston Frontenacs last season despite being just 16 years old. The 6-3, 185-pound blueliner struggled in camp, but is regarded as a Mark Stuart-type: solid in his own end, strong skater and a great leader."

(He actually only wore the C for a handful of games, but still, Sports Illustrated.)

Fronts: Geldart supplies the jam

It looks like our beloveds, the Kingston Frontenacs, have turned a weakness into a strength,

The talk on the NOOF and Fronts Talk is that grinder Kaine Geldart is coming home for his overage season. The Fronts have flipped the sixth overall choice in the CHL import draft to the Plymouth Whalers, and will get two draft choices in return. If it looks like a desperate attempt to squeak into the playoffs to convince people they're really trying (even though owner Doug Springer said last season the goal was "top four"), well, it is.

The Fronts typically make little use of the import draft since it requires Springer to do more than the bare minimum. Based on that alone, getting Geldart is a decent move. The Fronts sometimes don't value rounds 2-15 in the OHL Priority Selection, either, so it is just as well that GM-for-life Larry Mavety traded three draft choices for someone with only one year left in the league. Hey, a Frontenacs fan is nothing if not practical.

Geldart was a fan favourite with the Whalers and he should give the Fronts some badly needed jam up front. The trade might also answer questions about the status of the three potential overagers who were left at the end of the season.

(Update: Plymouth has put out a release.)

Geldart is 5-foot-9, 175 lbs, about the same size David Ling was in the early 1990s when he was perhaps the most popular player to ever lace 'em up forthe Fronts. He isn't a scorer like Linger was, but he's had glowing notices for intangibles:

"Silent off the ice, Geldart constantly chirps the opposition and receives the same treatment back. In spite of his size (he's listed at 5'9), Geldart will fight any opposing player. He forechecks as well as anyone in the league and adds his share of offense to the Whalers attack. Geldart is also a responsible defensive forward.

"Pound-for-pound, nobody is tougher in the OHL. Older Whalers fans might remember Mark Cadotte, who played in Plymouth from 1995-97 and is now working as a part-time assistant coach with the Windsor Spitfires. Geldart plays a similar style.

"The pot is always stirred up when Geldart is on the ice. Watch him away from the puck and you'll see." Pete Krupsky, Michigan Live, Oct. 30, 2008

The Frontenacs are lacking in scrappy grit quotient up front, save for one of the newest members of the New York Rangers organization, Ethan Werek. The Fronts generally have a smallish group of forwards, save for the Ethanator, whose wont is to outthink opposing d-men, although he is not averse to banging them up along the boards.

Ultimately, Geldart is probably Doug Gilmour's kind of player. Meantime, he's an overager (a player born in 1989). Forward George Lovatsis and d-men Corbin Crawford and Zack Fenwick are the other 89s who were still in the Fronts' employ at the end of the season, so if Geldart is coming, one of them is not. Fenwick previously played NCAA Division 1 and he finished last season in the ECHL, if anyone is looking for smoke.

Granted, the Fronts could have also traded for Geldart just so they can release him and let him earn a championship ring with the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs. (Just kidding, not really.)

Brock Higgs sticking with the Vees

Leave it to the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs to define, redefine, and exemplify, the word "class." Their year-end Fan Appreciation Night at Kingston's Ambassador Hotel represented a melange of the reasons they have become the model junior hockey franchise in the Limestone City. Open to all fans and supporters, the team repeatedly referred to its amazing, unprecedented community support in their historic divisional, provincial, and regional championship wins. The first team in eighty years in Kingston to represent the city at a national junior hockey championship did exhibit the usual fare of team awards; soon-to-be Golden Gael Stephane Chabot named team MVP, goaltender extraordinaire Shawn Sirman the playoff MVP, and to nobody's surprise, Brock Higgs named the most outstanding rookie.

Leave it to event MC Mark Potter to ask questions at the podium that no other likely would've. Apart from the usual fare of putting into words the delight the players and coaches felt at their historic run, he pressed Higgs on his oft-speculated future in hockey. His response, verbatim: "Looks like I'm coming back to the Voyageurs next year." In a bit more detail - so as to preserve NCAA eligibility.

But the way in which no stone was left unturned in the team's appreciation impressed me to no end. Every team billet was named and honoured, and every player, coach, and volunteer with the team was presented with a championship ring, acquired not by the league but by team owner Gregg Rosen himself. No cheap imitations, either; these were, as many I spoke with characterized them, Stanley Cup-caliber rings.

But there was a level of respect and downright admiration in the crowd that night that prevented any of it from seeming over the top. Nothing was seen as a cheap gimmick or a ploy for publicity, but rather as sincere expressions of gratitude and reflection on a season of unmatched achievement. When Rosen stood at the podium and declared that in 2012, not only would Kingston host the RBC Cup, but enter as league champions in their own right, there were no snickers, rolling of eyes, or guffaws as might be produced by other predictions of a national tournament. That is because, in only three years, the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs impressed an entire city with its ability to achieve more than some organizations do in twelve.

It wasn't achieved through luck, nor were there shortcuts to be taken advantage of. This was an achievement produced by ambition and smarts, two qualities that many franchises are in dire need of. Nor did they waste time on gloating, nor on endless self-congratulation, but only reflection on a job well done and a confident eye towards the future.

And heck, if they get a good new goalie, it's one heck of a bright future.

Related (though we scooped them):
Scoring star leans toward return to team (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)

CIS Corner: Former GGs goalie defence lawyer in hockey assault trial

Notes on athletes/teams from The 613 ... this is an old post, but pro hockey player Robin Gomez was acquitted after being charged with an on-ice assault.

You might have seen mention about the trial of Robin Gomez, a Victoria Salmon Kings player who is charged with assault causing bodily harm in connection with a fight that occurred during an ECHL game in March 2008.

What people might be interested to know is that former Ottawa Gee-Gees goalie Jordan Watt (pictured) is one of Gomez's defence lawyers, along with his father, Alexander "Sandy" Watt.

Gomez's accuser is Chris Ferraro, a former NHLer who was playing for the Las Vegas Wranglers. Here's the crux of what's before the court, as detailed by the
Victoria Times-Colonist:

"Gomez can be seen stepping onto the ice from the Salmon Kings bench, skating up to the Wranglers forward and punching him on the right side of the face. The blow sends Ferraro to the ice, hitting his head, as the crowd screams and a brawl breaks out between the two teams.

" 'I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Ten to 15 minutes later, I was coming out of an unconscious state, getting (eight) stitches to the back of my head,' said Ferraro, whose twin brother, Peter, also a Wranglers player, sat in the court gallery.

" ...Ferraro said that for about five weeks after the attack, he suffered from Bell's palsy, a short-term paralysis to the left side of his face."

It's for the court to decide if a criminal conviction is warranted

It just seems like an interesting intersection of the highways and byways of Canadian hockey and legal annals.

Watt played for the Gee-Gees from 2000-04 and after a two-year stint as an assistant coach, ended up playing a fifth and final season in '06-07. Before you form preconceived notions about the son of a lawyer who is now a lawyer, he had an unusual background for a hockey player and a lawyer. Watt was raised mostly by his mother, who died when he was 14, and his grandparents. He didn't play hockey until he was in his teens, and made his first WHL team as a walk-on. He was a very good interview subject, so it seemed post-worthy when I saw his name pop up in the news.

GAELS: Queen's announced two newbies for coach Brett Gibson:

• Stéphane Chabot, defence — The 6-foot-1, 208-lb. Rockland, Ont., native is pretty much your standard stay-at-home D-man. Chabot helped the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs reach the RBC Cup, the national Junior A championship last season, after playing in the OHL (if not for an OHL team) with the cross-town Frontenacs in 2007-08. His first two major junior seasons were in Brampton.
  
  It's not surprising Queen's would recruit a player from the Voyageurs. Gibson and assistant coaches Alyn McCauley and Andrew Haussler are all Vees alumni.
  
  
• Payton Liske, winger — Listed at 6-foot-4, 212 lbs., Liske should bring some beef up front and the numbers he put up with Saint John in the QMJHL the past two seasons (18 and 19 goals, 43 and 45 points) suggest he might add some badly needed scoring punch for the Gaels. He was also honoured as one of junior hockey's top scholastic players, so he's got that goin' for him, which is nice.
  
  Queen's scored an OUA-worst 57 goals last winter. It doesn't take P.J. Stock to point out you cannot win many games if you don't score a lot of goals, although P.J. Stock probably would point that out.
  
  Liske played for Owen Sound and Sault Ste. Marie in the OHL before getting his release and going to the QMJHL. (Saint John seems to lead the Q in taking former OHLers.)

With regard to Chabot, it was kind of a running joke in Kingston hockey circles last season that the Voyageurs had their best season in team history while using three players who had been released by the OHL's Frontenacs. The Frontenacs had a great season if you asked their owner and his army of apologists, although it was not reflected in the standings or tangible reality.

Related:
Assault trial of former Salmon King: Star hockey player says he was sucker-punched; Fighting is regular part of hockey, defence says (Katie DeRosa, Victoria Times-Colonist)
Trial on hockey assault charge opens in Victoria (CBC.ca)

(Links via Gregg Drinnan at Taking Note.)

Fronts: Doherty could slip, but where did you read that

Please do not hold your breath waiting for someone to make the connection between the Kingston Frontenacs management structure and OHL Prospects' view Fronts d-man Taylor Doherty is the league's biggest "faller" for the NHL draft:

"(Doherty) went into this season as a guy with the potential to go in the NHL lottery. But Doherty never took that step forward, as was expected. Offensively, he had a disappointing season, failing to match his stats from his rookie year. Defensively, he was exposed as a poor lateral mover and an undisciplined aggressor. In many cases, Doherty took a step backwards this season, rather than forwards. This caused his drop from potential lottery selection to possible third round selection."

(Click through, because somehow this Kingston Frontenacs post turned into a rant about Vernon Wells. That's the kind of weekend it was for the Blue Jays.)

Perish any thought that Doherty's development might have been impacted negatively by the last stint Larry Mavety had behind the Frontenacs bench, from the 12-game mark on in 2007-08 through the first third of last season. That probably did little very to aid Doherty's progress.

As a general point, it would be nicer to see more analytical coverage like the above one from Brock Otten making it into the traditional media when it comes to junior coverage, hell, any sports coverage in Canada, please excuse the gross generalization.

The NHL draft is approaching (June 26-27 in Montreal) It is good a time as any to make such a point. Chances are, in almost any city with a major junior hockey team, you will read the same rundown of which players with a tie to the area has a chance to be drafted, with the potential draftees saying the same extemporaneous comments about how it is a honour just to be drafted. It is in keeping with what a journo friend once suggested would be the ultimate headline, "Athlete hopes to win upcoming game." Sometimes it's as if the writer is looks at the player more the way a publicist looks at a client. (It can be stressed enough this is a general concern. The spur to say it didn't even come from a hockey story.)

Newspapers are limited by finite space, other priorities and cut-beyond-the-bone staffing levels (especially anywhere in Ontario, and you know who to thank). However, they should not turtle when it comes to trying to provide critical analysis, trying to increase understanding or provides a more cohesive picture of what's going on. People already know Big Bobby Clobber Jr. would like to be drafted, the higher the better, since that is why he has been playing hockey since age three. Having that in there, of course, is based on the false premise reality can only be shown through someone else's quotes.

There are piles of empirical evidence which show people want more detailed info. Instead, you can look forward to hearing the same-ol'-same-ol' draft hopeful clichés over the next 11, 12 days. I'm excited ... it's pretty surreal ... I haven't really thought about what team I'd like to be drafted by.

With Taylor Doherty, there is more to the story than just him being drafted. There's the story of how he went sideways a bit as a player in the eyes of informed observers, which jibes with what TVCogeco's Tim Cunningham said on Kinger's radio show during the Frontenacs season.

(Incidentally, the Belleville Bulls traded former Front Luke Pither to Barrie for three draft choices. So Luke Pither and Josh Brittain, Kingston's first-rounders in 2005 and '06, have been reunited. Brilliant!)

(What brought this on? Blame it on one OMD's column about the Blue Jays' Vernon Wells which ran in a Toronto newspaper over the weekend. The writer, who shall remain generic, had plenty of quotes from Wells, saying how he needs to put in extra work in the batting cage to snap out of his horrid hitting funk (now 0-for-17 and 138 at-bats without a home run). Of course, there was no mention of something most sentient Jays fans have already contemplated, that maybe this is as close to as good it gets for Wells. Five minutes of reading The Hardball Times or FanGraphs combined with a willingness to reason will show anyone that 40% of the way into a major league baseball season, a player's production has usually close to finding its own level, just like water. Of course, that cannot be allowed to creep into the picture. Vernon Wells is confident he's going to come around and be a 30-homer, 100-RBI guy like he was in 2006, so by God, write what he said.)

CIS Corner: Longer hockey schedule for OUA

Notes on our athletes/teams of interest from The 613 ...

Ottawa Gee-Gees coach Dave Leger was kind enough to explain the tweaks to the OUA men's hockey league, both the schedule and playoff format.

The OUA has expanded the playoffs and eliminated the first-round playoff bye in the wake of a post-season where none of four playoff seeds made it to the Queen's Cup, the conference championship series. (Trois-Rivières was the only one to win a playoff round, and it needed two overtimes in the decider vs. Fred Parker's Carleton Ravens.) The trade-off is 16 of 19 teams will make the playoffs — 8-of-10 in the East, which adds the expansion Nipissing Lakers, 8-of-9 in the West.

It seems much tidier just to revise the post from earlier.

• The playoffs will be a true 1-through-8, meaning an end to barely .500 teams earning the No. 2 seed and getting a first-round bye. Last season's No. 2 seeds, Toronto in the East and York in the West, had the fourth- and fifth-best records in their conferences.
  
  "The main feature is having two more playoff teams on each side," Leger said. "We'll still have the four divisions, but the only purpose for those delineations is to help sort out the cross-over scheduling."
  
  
• There is more of an emphasis on conference play. Cross-over scheduling will be set up to "achieve balance over a period of time." It will take 3-4 years for everyone to play everyone, but the intention is to address concerns that certain teams played the Lakeheads of the world more often than some of their rivals.
  
  "There was a real appetite from the coaches to have a cross-over," Leger says. "There was talk about having all East teams play all West teams, but some of the coaches and athletic directors weren't too happy. However, there was a lot of interest to have a cross-over, and thankfully we're going to have one.
  
  "Having a strong team like a Waterloo or a Western is good for our team and good for our school."
  
  
• It seems like cross-over play, based on two teams' schedules which were posted online, will all take place before Jan. 1. That means teams will be going head-to-head during the closing sprint that begins on the first weekend of January, which is a positive development.
  
  Last season, Ottawa was dealing with an injury bug when it went just 1-2-1 during a four-game swing vs. Mid West teams, which made it harder for hold off Queen's for the final playoff spot.
  
  
• The schedule is sticking at 28 games. Lakehead and Queen's each posted schedules that had 30 conference games, but the schedule increase didn't get approval.
  

As a personal opinion, the net gain seems to be increasing the integrity of the post-season. There might be some sniping about increasing the size of the playoff tournament, especially after Canada West reduced its from six teams to four. However, the OUA is essentially doing the same thing, getting rid of byes in the post-season that can leave a team sitting around and doing special teams drills for a week.

Meantime, Leger did pass along some recruiting news with a Kingston angle. Stay-at-home defenceman Tyler Hill, who captained the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs team which won the Central Canadian title, is joining the Gee-Gees.

(Thanks to Todd Mathers for the tip. Cross-posted to cisblog.ca.)

Noteworthy

• It's a few days old, but Queen's linebacker Thaine Carter is vowing to play like an angry young man at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers training camp after going in the last round of the draft.
• Point guard Courtnay Pilypaitis, the Ottawa native who led the U of Vermont to the NCAA Tournament, has been named to Canada's women's basketball team for the 2009 World University Games, which begin July 1 in Belgrade, Serbia.
  
  This probably has to be folded into that omnibus post about how badly Canada Basketball is being hosed (by the media, corporate Canada, the federal ministry of sport assuming Canada still has one, and so on), but Canada is travelling with only 10 players. That is like sending a hockey team to the world juniors with only five defencemen.

Vees: Eastern Ontario hockey related-humour

It would be remiss not to pass along this gem from venerable Kingston sports scribe Pat Kennedy about the hometown Voyageurs vying to host the RBC Cup, the national Junior A championship, in some future spring:

"One obstacle to scale might be the availability of the K-Rock Centre, which is contractually obligated to save springtime ice time in the event the Kingston Frontenacs make the playoffs someday and — this is really stretching it — advance throughout."

(later on)

"... Cornwall hosted the 2008 RBC, prompting (Voyageurs owner Gregg) Rosen to remark that 'if Cornwall can host it, we can certainly host it. We have more to offer than Cornwall.' "

Cornwall-bashing is the ultimate low-hanging fruit, but that's neither here nor there. Here is hoping a bid by the Voyageurs for the Dudley Hewitt Cup (Central Canadian championship) or RBC Cup wouldn't get the boot before any other team's, which has been known to happen.

There is the potential to have a lot of cheap fun with the shinny study-in-contrasts, Champs vs. Chumps, which is unfolding in K-town.

Coach Evan Robinson's Vees, by reaching the semi-final at the RBC Cup, finished as the fourth-best Tier II Junior A team in the country. The Frontenacs finished with the fourth-worst record of any major junior team in Canada.* Oh, and the Frontenacs' floundering has contributed to the $43-million arena becoming a political pandora's box for city council and Mayor Harvey Rosen, the brother of the owner of the other junior hockey team which has won the hearts of some many sports likers. Good stuff.

To be fair, Harvey Rosen is great compared to other eastern Ontario mayors one could name.

As previously noted, the Vees' Ontario Junior Hockey League is realigning again, so next season they'll have Buffalo, New York, in their conference but not the significantly closer Wellington Dukes. The new Ontario Conference will consist of:

• Buffalo, the league's lone American entry;
• The cottage country teams: Aurora, Collingwood, Couchiching, Huntsville;
• The NOT teams (as in North of Toronto): Bramalea, Brampton, Georgetown, Milton, Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan, Villanova (located in King City)
• Trenton, which used to be in Port Hope
  

Don't go looking for any geographical logic. The subtext is the OJHL has tension between franchises which are run more like a Junior A team in the West and a few which have Toronto-itis. The latter are loath to straying too far away from the GTA to play and/or are bankrolled by some rich hockey dad so his son and his buddies can play close to home. The teams in the new conference also want to use fewer 20-year-olds, as a selling point to get younger players who are going for NCAA scholarships (as the Kingston Whig-Standard reported, the Vees only used six 20-year-olds this season, three less than the max; one wonders if they wouldn't take advantage of this by recruiting overagers who would then play for Queen's the following season).

Robinson and his players have been thanked more than enough for their run. They don't need to be told that they renewed a lot of hometown pride which had lain dormant during Doug Springer and Larry Mavety's decade of dismalness. The hope, speaking as an expat, is that one day the Vees' success won't be a jumping-off point for to make light of the Limestone City's Light Brigade. Wait 'til next year, eh?

Related:
Vees' league takes on new look (Kingston Whig-Standard)

Fronts: Well, that's not the way they tell it

Get the meme: The Kingston Frontenacs are happy with their draft (them and 19 other teams; no one ever says it is unhappy with its draft) and that's good enough to sustain hope through the summer. There is no truck with this Plan B talk.

"London took a gamble that defenceman Scott Harrington can be swayed from attending a U.S. college, which long ago scared off his hometown Kingston Frontenacs from taking him second overall.

"Harrington, who plays a strong two-way game, was eventually scooped 19th by the Knights.

" 'Sometimes, you roll the dice," general manager Mark Hunter told the London Free Press. 'He's one of the top couple of players in the draft. We'll try to talk to him and see what happens.'

"... Kingston went with Plan B, 5-foot-10 centre Alan Quine." — Toronto Sun

Who knows who will turn out to be the better player. (This is a sleazy way to keeping the door open to screaming bloody murder if Harrington becomes the best defenceman in the OHL in 2-3 years' time.)

For the time being, itseems best to hedge. There was no drop-dead No. 1 pick in the draft beyond Daniel Catenacci, whom the Frontenacs lost their shot at when they put together a few window-dressing wins in low-leverage situations late in the season. Kingston said very early in the process that it was leaning toward taking a forward. Harrington, by most accounts, was not a no-doubter as the best defenceman available. He and Ryan Murphy (the No. 3 overall pick to Kitchener) and Justin Sefton (who went No. 5 to Sudbury) were played up as kind of 1, 1A and 1B among the crop of 1993-born d-men. The Frontenacs also have Erik Gudbranson just a year ahead of them.

This franchise is not always wrong. Time will tell, eh.

Incidentally, on the subject of Kingston and hockey, it did not go so well for the Voyageurs in their opener at the RBC Cup, a 5-0 loss to the Victoria Grizzlies. They face Summerside in their second game.

(Congratulations are also in order for Whig-Standard city editor Claude Scilley. Claude, who was previously the sports ed., won an Ontario Newspaper Award for editorial writing last weekend.

OHL fans outside the GTA hold these truths to be self-evident

Let the name-calling begin: The London Knights took a quote, unquote flier on college hockey-bound Scott Harrington from the Kingston Kimco Voyageurs in today's OHL priority selection (or as it's called in English, "draft").

Harrington and his advisers have to do what is best for Harrington, who will only be 16 years old once. The real beef is:

• People have fib to get what's best for a player's future;
  
  
• A boy who's still only Grade 10 is put in such a predicament;
  
  
• The OHL maintains the façade that the draft is a fair fight;
  
  
• A loaded London team just happened to take a top-5 talent with the 19th overall selection at no risk to them.

It is an eye-roller when Harrington and his agent tell the hometown paper, "Our plan right now is to go NCAA," and then boom, he gets drafted by London.

Who knows how this plays out. One scenario is that the Knights will say they had a different "vibe" when they spoke to Harrington. He'll say that after thinking it over, the OHL is really the best place to play. It's easy to predict since this has happened so many times before.

It doesn't take too long, about three minutes over MSN with a fellow junior hockey devotee, to come up with with five players in the past few years who have said they were going to play college hockey and then changed their mind after being drafted by London. The Knights got future No. 1 overall NHL draft pick Patrick Kane, now starring for the Chicago Blackhawks, that way. The same went for current Edmonton Oilers center Sam Gagner. John Carlson, London's best defenceman and Phil McRae, a superb forward, were each committed to the the U.S. national team development program before mysteriously breaking that to go to the Knights. (And you wonder why each was left off the U.S. world junior team last season.) London is hardly the only team. Others remember how Brampton Battalion standouts Cody Hodgson and Matt Duchene, who have the same agent, gamed the system in order to play together.

One should be happy for Scott Harrington. All he said was, "Our plan right now is to go NCAA, so we're going to focus on that route right now and we'll see what happens on draft day." That's not even a lie. His concept of right now just happened to very ephemeral.

The kicker is that Harrington has to make this choice. There is no political will in hockey to work for a reasonable solution, like letting someone play in any amateur league he wants until he finishes high school and has a better idea of whether he has a shot at the NHL, or should parlay his puck skills into getting an education.

Harrington deserves to write his own ticket, like anyone who's graduated at the top of the class, so to speak. The machinations are completely understandable on his end, but try telling that to the fans who support the league with their discretionary income, venturing out on cold winter nights to watch the hometown team. People who follow the OHL support it as a business because they want to see teams win more than they want to see individual players develop, although that is a big part of the sell.

Fans have had it up to here with the league insisting all teams are created equal when season after season, top-end talents just happen to fall to certain teams, often those located in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe such as Brampton, Kitchener and London.

The real kicker is that London is not out anything if Harrington actually pursues college hockey, which we all know he's not doing (although he would conceivably play two full seasons with his hometown Vees). Ontario Hockey League teams can get a compensatory second-round draft choice if the first-rounder doesn't report. That makes taking him less of a risk to London, which is usually drafting near the end of the first round. The trade-off is much, much greater for a team picking in the top 10. Talk about an unintended consequence.

It's not clear how much sympathy there should be for the small-city teams out in the hinterlands. Franchises such as the Kingston Frontenacs should look in the mirror first if agents and parents try to steer top-end players to other teams.

At the same time, they can't do anything about geography. Many of the league's faithful customers are upset, and nothing gets done. What a way to run a business.

Vees slipping away

As the Kingston Kimbo Voyageurs continue on their incredible run to the national championship, the cross-town Frontenacs have to have been keeping their eye on some local players to boost their roster.

Unfortunately for the Fronts and the OHL in general, the new avenue for many players is to take the NCAA route. Today the Kingston Whig Standard reported that 16-year-old Scott Harrington says he will play at the U.S. college level instead of the OHL. Harrington seems to be following in the footsteps of Frontenac draft choice Brock Higgs heading to the States. Bringing in local talent has been an issue for the Frontenacs and things do not look like they are going to change soon.

The main thought behind these players taking the NCAA route seems to be education. Many players are looking for something to drop back on if hockey doesn't work out for them. Harrington has a quote in The Whig further explaining his decision, "The most important thing on my mind is to get an education and have a solid backup plan. The NCAA is a great way to go and I am really looking forward to hopefully pursuing that."

It does make sense considering players like Harrington don't look like they have a real future playing hockey beyond a junior level. On the other hand many average players enter the OHL and start catching the eyes of NHL scouts with breakout performances, but the odds are never brilliant. What this really means though that the Frontenacs could be letting another quality local player through their grip.

With Kingston natives flourishing across the league in different cities, letting local talent go is something that Fronts fans are starting to become paranoid about. Kingstonian Mike Murphy, has been named OHL goaltender of the year for the second year running. He was also passed on twice in the OHL draft by Kingston. Another Kingstonian, Taylor Hall, looks like he could be leading the Windsor Spitfires to an OHL title with three points in last night's 10-1 win over Brampton in the first game of the OHL final. This is something that the Frontenacs have done in the past and that they may be doing again.

Higgs, Kingston's fifth-round draft pick in the 2008 draft, has excelled with the Voyageurs. He was the league's leading scorer in the playoffs with 39 points in 25 games. It appears that Higgs will also shun Kingston and the OHL in favour of an agreement with Canisius College in Buffalo.

Higgs recently said that he had not yet made a decision but all signs point to him heading south of the border. Credit to Fronts GM Larry Mavety for appealing to Higgs to stay in Kingston, but a winning hockey team would no doubt help his cause.

With the Voyageurs heading to Victoria for a national championship starting this weekend, they must be doing something right. Maybe it is time that the Frontenacs start to work on their relationship with the team and its players at a younger age making sure that the Higgs and Harrington situations are isolated ones. The Fronts never really have had a positive relationship with the Voyageurs except for the fact that Higgs played for the Voyageurs after being drafted by the Fronts.

One of the stranger chapters in the Voyageurs-Frontenacs relationship came at the Vees' "good luck" party at the Invista Centre yesterday when the Voyageurs organization thanked the Frontenacs for waiving Kevin Christmas, Justin Levac and Stephane Chabot.

That was a bit puzzling to me considering that it wasn't as if the Fronts gave the Voyageurs a real lift, they just gave them players they didn't want anymore. Point is for more local players to come though the Frontenacs the relationship with the Voyageurs will have to change, and it's not up to the Voyageurs start changing anything...

With the OHL draft coming up and the local talent looking slim, it is pretty much set in stone that Kingston will pick centre, Alan Quine with the second overall selection in the draft. Although he appears to be highly rated by many scouts across the province it still isn't the same satisfaction that drafting a successful, local player late on brings.

As Neate pointed out to me earlier today, it has been 557 days ago since Frontenacs owner Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winning team to Kingston.

Related:
Cooper leads Kingston to RBC tournament (Charlottetown Guardian)
Vees star plans to shun OHL; Fronts won't stray from plans; Vees give thanks to many, including Fronts (Kingston Whig-Standard)