After entering the league in 1999, the South Park Cows are no more. The franchise’s new ownership, which signed on this summer, has announced the team’s rebirth as the Great Lakes Pilots.
The Pilots will adopt new team colors for the 2011-2012 season and play out of the Solar Palace.
The Midland Bulldogs are pulling up roots and heading to Denver, team officials have announced. The former ‘Dogs will be reborn as the Denver Spurs beginning in the 2011-2012 season.
In a long-rumored move, the Oregon Rugrats have also found a new home, heading down the coast to become the San Francisco Seals.
Blah-blah-blah-thousands. Blah-blah-blah-generational talent. We like to celebrate amazing careers and statistical milestones here. But what about the other end of the spectrum?
Here’s our look at the four shortest careers in Gump Worsley Memorial Hockey League history – careers that came and went in the time it takes for you to brush your teeth. Look at it as a celebration of incredible efficiency! Maybe these guys were all just really, really fast.
Zoom.
The Midland Bulldogs and Vancouver Night Train have kicked off the summer with a center-for-winger swap.
The move sends pivot Tomas Plekanec to Vancouver, who are looking to recapture the ’09-’10 form of a team that was deep up the middle, for winger David Jones.
The Bulldogs are hoping that Jones, who has played 64 games over three seasons for Vancouver, gives them a top-six goal-scorer to play alongside the likes of Vincent Lecavalier, Danny Briere, Mike Richards, and Matt Duchene. Plekanec, meanwhile, is coming off a disappointing year (21 points in 61 games) but will likely see more icetime behind Jonathan Toews on the Night Train.
The GWMHL has officially announced the list of player releases due to under-use, effective immediately. The list is headlined by veterans like Mike Modano, Adam Foote, and Chris Osgood, as well as two surprises – utility winger Tomas Kopecky, formerly of Delta, and center Darren Helm, who recently helped the Salem Wannabees to its second straight Gump Cup Finals.
All players who are now free agents who, if eligible, will be available in the pre-season Free Agent Draft.
The full list:
West Virginia‘s Alexander Semin is the kind of sniper you appreciate for their goal-scoring prowess while wondering about their commitment to the game.
Semin was drafted by the River Rats – then based in Bristol – 13th overall in 2004, between John-Michael Liles and Marek Svatos.
But he wasn’t Bristol’s marquee draft pick. This is the year management had decided to blow the whole thing up, dealing away most of its top players for draft picks. By draft day, they’d accumulated a staggering number of them – they had six picks in the first round and 10 in the top 30.
That year, they snagged the likes of Eric Staal, Joni Pitkanen, Dan Hamhuis, Antoine Vermette, Fedor Tyutin, Brent Burns, and Anton Babchuk… and Alex Semin.
Semin played one season for Bristol and failed to light it up, then bolted for Russia. In the meantime, Bristol became the West Virginia River Rats and Semin had matured into a big-time scorer. He potted 56 in his first year back, then 28, 40, and finally set a career high with 60 goals in ’10-’11.
The West Virginia River Rats, headed by original GWMHL member Jim Connell, have won their first-ever Gump Cup!
After shocking the Salem Wannabees – who were in the finals for the second straight year – at home in games 1 and 2, the River Rats took it to West Virginia and sealed the sweep in front of the home crowd. They won game 3 by the score of 5-2, then took the Gump Cup with a thrilling 3-2 overtime victory that saw Alex Semin score the cup-winning goal. Semin finished tied for the playoff scoring lead with linemate Sidney Crosby. Each had 24 points in 17 games.
We’d like to congratulate Jim – you won’t find a finer GM and better guy! Congrats! And thank you to all our members on another great GWMHL season!
You can catch up on all the action from the 2010-2011 Gump Cup Playoffs right here.
With trading set to reopen once the finals are done and back-room talks already ramping up, it’s a good time to look back at some of the bigger deals in recent years – the moves that shook the GWMHL, shifted the balance of power, and got us where we are today.
GMs haven’t exactly been shy about moving marquee names, but these five game-changing trades are different: their effect is still being felt in the GWMHL today.
5. South Carolina trades Dany Heatley, Braydon Coburn, and Rich Peverley to Salem for Loui Eriksson, Jeff Carter, and Tomas Kaberle (2010)
Why? Heatley, Peverley and Coburn are all producers for the Fire Ants, there’s no question. Heatley, in particular has scored 38 and 40 goals as a Fire Ant, and the trade is pretty equal when you consider each team’s needs at the time.
But the move came at a time when the Wannabees were turning into serious contenders. If there’s a move that made its current run to the Gump Cup Finals possible, it’s this one. Eriksson has already had two 40-goal years for the Wannabees, and tallied 119 points this season. Carter had a down year behind Pavel Datsyuk and Nicklas Backstrom but is only a season removed from 54 goals. And Kaberle took a deep defense corps and made it ridiculous.
The 2011 GWMHL Draft Lottery, which determines the order of the first twelve picks in the first round of the 2011 Rookie Draft, was held today with several GMs were in attendance for the real-time announcement, waiting to see win big – and hoping their teams didn’t tumble.
The Nashville Knights took the number one overall pick. No surprise, since the Knights finished dead last in the 2010-2011 regular season. That gave them the best shot at the top choice and the hockey gods delivered.
The second pick was a surprise. The South Park Cows‘ new ownership will have a chance to make a major stamp on the team with the number two pick. The Cows moved all the way up from sixth.
The Altoona Railroaders, who were second-to-last in the regular season and are currently vacant, slotted in at third overall.
The draft order for the first round of the 2011 Rookie Draft will be as follows:
1. Nashville
2. South Park
3. Altoona
4. Ice Harbor
5. Delta
6. Oregon
7. Vancouver
8. Baltimore
9. Boston
10. San Diego
11. Midland
12. Sterling
13. El Dorado
14. Farmington
15. South Carolina
16. Charleston
17. Saint Louis
18. West Virginia
19. Portland
20. Salem
Today we wrap up our look at some of the individual milestones reached in 2010-2011.
Of course, Portland’s Jarome Iginla hit 500 goals and teammate Martin Brodeur became the all-time leader in career wins. But Iginla was, in fact, one of four players – along with fellow Winterhawk Joe Thornton, South Park’s Nicklas Lidstrom, and Oregon’s Mike Modano – to crack 1000 career points this year.
In Lidstrom’s case, it’s especially noteworthy: he’s the all-time points leader for defensemen and is the first blueliner in league history to break 1000. He now sits at 1006 in his career and shows few signs of slowing down.
Meanwhile, it was a watershed moment when Ice Harbor’s Keith Tkachuk, the league’s leader in career goals and points, hung them up. He wasn’t the only retiree of note. The season also saw the swan song of West Virginia defenseman – and one-time Tkachuk teammate – Scott Niedermayer, who is second all-time in points for a defensemen with 885.
Recent Midland release Bill Guerin (446 career goals, 11th all-time), Delta’s Slava Kozlov (830 points, 20th all-time), and free agent Rod Brind’amour (952 points, 15th all-time) also announced their retirement. The Boston Banshees’ Paul Kariya – 10th all-time with 449 goals – is also likely going to hang them up.
Lots more all-time leaders, from the very best to disasters of Kent Mandervillian proportions, can be found here.
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