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10/16/2006 by Bob Crawford Hopefully, the Wolf Pack have gotten a season's-worth of frustrations out of the way in the first three games… This season-opening drought, to me, is a vivid illustration of how slim the margin is between success and defeat at this level of competition. There is no doubt in my mind that the Pack could easily be 3-0. They have had at least five bad minutes in all three of their games, though, and that small segment of letdown has doomed them to defeat each time. In the opener, it was the first five minutes of the game, and the team could never fully recover from that bad start, although they would close what was a 3-0 deficit to 3-2 before running out of time. In this past Friday's game against Bridgeport, the slip came near the end of the game, starting with less than nine minutes remaining in the third, and before the Wolf Pack knew what was happening, a 3-2 lead had become a 5-3 deficit in a span of less than three minutes. On Saturday in Lowell the bad stretch was even less concentrated, as the Pack controlled much of their first road game. They would outshoot the new-look Devils 34-25, but a couple of deflections and a poke-in off of a scramble would carry the home side to a 3-2 win. While understandably miffed at the breakdowns that led to Friday's tumble, the Wolf Pack coaching staff was upbeat after Saturday's game. There seemed to be no doubt in their minds that the team had played well enough to win, and that if they continue to maintain that level of competition, the wins will significantly outnumber the losses going forward. They encouraged the players not to hang their heads, that the group is coming together as a team and that they are doing a lot of good things. Prior to the last eight-and-a-half minutes or so on Friday, there were several highlights for the Wolf Pack. Brandon Dubinsky scored his first two regular-season goals as a pro (he chipped in five goals and 10 assists in 12 playoff games last spring) and both were good plays. The first one featured a nifty backhand move and the second was an absolute bomb of a shot. And both were off assists from fellow rookie Dane Byers, with whom Dubinsky already seems to be developing a little Western Hockey League chemistry. Byers, for his part, continues to play a good, simple game, skating his wing with authority and working the boards well. Lauri Korpikoski scored his first goal of the season (he would get another on Saturday), and Hugh Jessiman added an assist to go with his goal from the opening game. I was impressed that the Pack did not seem to show any residual effects Saturday from the late-game meltdown on Friday. Like most of Friday's contest, they had good jump and good speed in the game against Lowell, and if you had asked me early in the third period who I thought would win what was then a 2-2 game, I definitely would have said the Wolf Pack. Unfortunately for them, though, the team could not translate their territorial advantage into notches on the scoreboard, and a deft tip-in by veteran scoring ace Justin Papineau at 7:57 of the third gave the Devils a hard-fought win. I am going to spend the rest of this column answering a question I received this summer from Fred Vee of Hamden, CT. Apropos of the tenth-anniversary season, Fred asked, “Since you have been with the Pack for many years and you have seen players come and go, if you were to be coach for a day and had all the players back from the past, which players would you have skating for your four lines on offense, three lines on defense and two goalies for a game and why?" Okay Fred, here goes… My first line is fairly easy … for my money the three best-known names in the history of the franchise, Ken Gernander, Brad Smyth and Derek Armstrong. In my experience in minor pro hockey, which goes back 18 years now, I don't think you could find a better combination of all-around offensive savvy (Armstrong), two-way effort and leadership (Gernander) and pure, distilled goal-scoring hunger (Smyth). These are three of my personal favorite players (not to mention people) of all-time, and I think a lot of Wolf Pack fans would agree. Next I would probably go with a trio of Marc Savard, Alex Giroux and Jason Dawe. This would be more of a “pure offense” line. Savard was really only here for one year, but as the numbers he has put up in the NHL attest, he is possessed of as “big-time” a skill level as anyone we have seen come through Hartford as an AHL player. I would almost put Giroux in a similar category, although he has never gotten much of a look at the NHL level. I always enjoyed watching him a lot, for the elan (to use a French) term with which he played the game and the wizardry he was willing to try with the puck, in an era in which you don't see a ton of that in the game. And Dawe scored so many big goals for the Pack during the Calder Cup year of 2000. I'll always remember the Pack's acquiring him as the point where that season really took off. Maybe not as thoroughgoing a sniper as Shooter Smyth, but pretty close. After those two threesomes, I would pick the next two on intangibles. My third line would be P.J. Stock, Johan Witehall and Todd Hall. Stock, obviously, would be your master agitator and chief pain in the neck to the opposition. He deserves great credit also for the Cup victory, having done an excellent job making Rochester's Domenic Pittis' life miserable in the Finals, thereby neutralizing arguably their top offensive force. I was a huge fan of Witehall's combination of speed, nastiness and a pretty decent scoring touch, and it has always surprised me that he never went on to have more extensive NHL career. Hall, in my mind, was a real “player's player”, the consummate professional who played the game the way it was meant to be played, and scored his share of big goals (e.g., the winner in the Cup-clinching game in Rochester) too. For my fourth line, I'd tab a combination of Chris Kenady, Boyd Kane and Ryan Hollweg. This would be my pure grit line. My thinking about Kenady is again colored by my fond memories of the Calder Cup year. He scored several huge goals in big spots in that year's playoffs, and was one of the better guys I've ever seen in Wolf Pack annals at creating offense out of consistent banging and crashing. Kane was a similar player, who always had the other team mad at him because he was always throwing the body around. You have to give him credit, also, for what he has done since being traded out of the organization, what with captaining two different teams to the Calder Cup. Hollweg is a personal favorite of mine, being an undersized guy who is completely fearless on the ice. Right from when he first had a cup of coffee with the Wolf Pack at the end of 2001-02, I found watching him pinball around the ice and create havoc extremely entertaining. I think, too, with the hockey sense he showed here and his effort level, he will become a much better offensive player in the NHL as his career goes along. On defense, I'll go with my top pair as two guys who played together quite a bit while they were here, Terry Virtue and Tomas Kloucek. Virtue was the ultimate veteran warrior and a guy who I thought was a real key to the personality of some very successful Wolf Pack teams. Kloucek, with his combination of jam and mobility, was as good a defensive prospect as the Pack have had. Injuries have somewhat derailed his progress it seems, hopefully for him he can get back on track to fulfilling the promise he showed while helping to win the Cup. My second duo would be Lawrence Nycholat and Mike Mottau. These were two of the best offensive, puck-moving D-men to have worn Wolf Pack jerseys, and Nycholat has some real toughness and scrappiness to his game too (not that Mottau shied away from anything). For my third pairing, I'd choose two good ol' fashioned, crease-clearing bruisers, Brent Thompson and Dale Purinton. Those guys did a ton of grunt work over a lot of years and put some healthy fear in the hearts of a number of pretty good players in opposing jerseys. Both too showed excellent staying power in the pro game, with Purinton now in his tenth year with the Ranger organization and Thompson coaching in the AHL with Peoria after a 14-year pro career. And finally, in the cage, not going too far off the board here, I would give the nod to the two “Labs'”. Those are, of course, J.F. Labbe and Jason LaBarbera. If I had to win one game for all the marbles, I don't think I could find a better big-game performer than Labbe, and it was lots of fun watching LaBarbera develop over his career from a third wheel into a guy who in 2003-04 had one of the greatest individual seasons in the history of the league. Tough to eliminate a guy like a Dan Cloutier, with all the success he's had in the NHL, but like in the cases of several other players throughout Wolf Pack history, he was only here for one season, and I have to give the edge to longevity. As someone who has seen all but two of the games in franchise history, those are my picks. To make yours, go to the Tenth-Anniversary section here at hartfordwolfpack.com and click on “Polls”. Thanks for the question, Fred, and the impetus to think back on so many great players and great games! |
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Last Updated: 21 October 2006