Jets Flying in Winnipeg

[MKoivuFan]

This is my first ever EHM 07 story so please let me know what u think or what needs to be changed.

Winnipeg Jets

A lot of talks have been going around the league with purchasing teams and moving them. With only six teams in Canada rite now and all, some private investors have purchased the Colorado Avalanche and moved them to Winnipeg and brought back the Jets organization. Winnipeg Jets are now in the Northwest as Hamilton Bulldogs as their farm team along with Long Beach. Montreals farm team is now Quebec Citadelles and Boston’s 2nd farm team is Bakersfield.

August 1st 2006 – With the Entry draft just happening, we don’t have an expansion roster yet. They (the League) told me I had to trade the former Blues players away for players to make up the team. The first seven players to ever draft in the NHL here is my entry draft list.

1st Round – Nicklas Backstrom
2nd round – Cory Emmerton
3rd round – Steve Mason
4th round – Bobby Hughes
5th round – Jordan Bendfeld
6th round – Dane Crowley
7th round – Devin DiDiomete

Winnipeg Jets make their NHL debut with games against Detroit (away), Columbus (away) and Edmonton (away) 5th, 6th and 8th respectively.

Hamilton Bulldogs will open their 2006-2007 season with games against Grand Rapids (home); Milwaukee (home) and Chicago (away) on October 6th, 7th and 13th respectively.

Long Beach make their ECHL start a new look this year with their season starting with games against Bakersfield (home), Las Vegas (home) and Stockton (away) on October 21st, 22nd and 23rd respectively.

We were able to sign Nigel Williams to a contract. The thing with Nigel is that he wanted to finish his college hockey years first before coming and I told him that’s fine with our organization. There is two different camps that will be going on come the beginning of September. September 1st to the 10th will be our prospects camp and then from September 10th to the 21st I believe it will be our mix of Bulldogs and IceDogs camp and then our main camp begins on the 16th of September so there’s a lot to prepare for in the upcoming weeks.

With that being said Hamilton will be signing some players up to the camp and that doesn’t mean they will be a Bulldog this upcoming season. I am just signing the players who I think will make the teams for sure. The other ones will be invited to the bulldogs camp at which I will divide all players into two team at which I will play them against some ECHL teams and some AHL teams to see which players will be playing where in the upcoming weeks.
August 6th 2006 – Long Beach has sold 774; Winnipeg Jets have sold 3,740 season tickets for the upcoming season and the Hamilton Bulldogs have sold 2,259 tickets

August 7th 2006 – Today Hamilton Bulldogs have signed Kelwona Rocket Defenseman Clayton Barthel and London Knight forward Robbie Drummond to contracts.

Also Drake Berehowsky signed with Pittsburgh and Brian Leetch has signed with St. Louis Blues.

Later on in the day Hamilton Bulldogs signed Aaron Gagnon and Ryan Garlock.

August 8th 2006 – Washington has traded their 4th in 07 to New Jersey for john Madden. We also made two deals with Montreal but I will announce it as one. We traded a 3rd in 09 and a 6th in 10 to Montréal for Sergei Kostitsyn and Duncan Milroy. Milroy will bring some experience to our farm team and Sergei our scouts were very high on him so they told me to try to see what I can get for him and if I can get him cheap then go for it and only getting him for a pick is good for us.

Hamilton Bulldogs signed another London Knights player in Frank Rediker.

August 9th 2006 – LA Kings traded their 4th in 2007 to Montreal for Janne Niinimaa.

August 11th 2006 –We have signed Nicklas Backstrom to a contract.

August 13th 2006 – Winnipeg Jets have now sold 4,575 tickets from there 3,740 before, Long Beach have gone from selling 774 tickets to now selling 927 season tickets. Finally Hamilton Bulldogs have sold 2,259 before and now they have sold a total of 2,663 season tickets.

August 16th 2006 – Hamilton Bulldogs have signed Mathieu Melanson who used to play with the Quebec QMJHL team.

August 17th 2006 – Hamilton signed Max Gordichuk and Patrick Bordeleau. Also Brent Tookenay has been named the new Citadelles General Manager.

August 18th 2006 – St. Louis traded a 3rd in 07 to Dallas for Stu Barnes.
We also signed free agents Patrik Berglund to contract.

August 20th 2006 – Hamilton Bulldogs season tickets are now up to 2,839 from 2,663; Jets are now at 4,905 sold and Long beach have now sold 986 season tickets.

We also signed Jared Aulin to a contract.

I just thought I would let the readers know, is that I am going with one goalie five defenseman and nine forwards for the junior camp against the AHL and ECHL teams.

[MKoivuFan]

August 27th 2006 – Winnipeg Jets are at 5,045 now for season tickets, Hamilton Bulldogs are at 2,916 and Long Beach are at 1,009.

August 31st 2006 – We have four games scheduled for the rookie camp. Those four games are, Sept 2nd vs. Quebec Citadelles, 4th vs. Dayton; 6th vs. Phoenix (ECHL) and 8th vs. Toronto (AHL).

Here are the lines for the rookie camp:

Line 1: Cory Emmerton – Nicklas Backstrom – Robbie Drummond
Clayton Barthel – Max Gordichuk
Line 2: Patrick Bordeleau – Ryan Garlock – Mathieu Melanson
Frank Rediker – Jordan Little
Line 3: Sergei Kostitsyn – Aaron Gagnon – Bobby Hughes
Jordan Bendfeld – Dane Crowley

Steve Mason

September 2nd 2006 – Today is the big day. Our first look at what these young rookies can do. Not only are my first ever drafted players in this game playing for the rookie Jets team but some players who have been drafted in the past 1-3 yrs and weren’t signed so my farm team went on to sign them. They will show the rest of the league why their old teams made the mistake in not signing them.

Today we are at home to the Citadelles. Nicklad Backstrom has been named team Captain.

The only action that happened in the 1st period was the goal from Zach Stortini that put Quebec up on the board and that leads 1-0 after the 1st period. In the second period Quebec was able to get a good lead with score two more goals. One was from Kyle Chipchura and the other was from Matt D’Agostini, and now leads 3-0 after the 2nd period. Mathieu Melanson finally got our rookie team on the board at the 49:04 mark of the third period from max Gordichuk and Cory Emmerton on the power play. After that it was all Citadelles as they scored 2 more goals. One was Chipchura with his 2nd of the game and the other one was from Michael Lambert. The final was 5-1.

We have a bunch of 18-20 yr olds in our team not as experience as the Citadelles line up was this game but we play Dayton in two days and it will give us an idea of what this rookie camp is bring and what it is going to have because we have three more games before camp is over.

September 4th 2006 – Today we try to bounce back from that 5-1 loss to the Citadelles two nights a go with a hopeful win against Dayton tonight at home.

Steve Mason gets the start again tonight. Ryan Garlock got our rookies o nthe board first in the first period with a powerplay goal from Robbie Drummond and Frank Rediker. Dayton bounce back with two goals from Konsorada and Herneisen to make it 2-1 after the 1st period. All three goals were power play goals. Frank Rediker tied the game up I nthe 2nd period at the 32:04 mark to have the game tied 2-2 after two. In the third period Redlihs scored the game winning goal to have Dayton win a close game 3-2.

August 6th 2006 – Before we get to the rookie team vs Phoenix game I just thought I would let u know for the Bulldogs training camp to see which unsigned players will be making the cut I have decided to cut the team down into four teams. These teams not will only play 2 pre-season games each but they will play against each other in camp.

Jets rookies open the score in the Jets vs Phoenix game with a goal by Cory Emmerton at 3:14 in the 1st period. Jets take a 2 goal lead with a goal from Patrick Bordeleau from Mathieu Melanson and Ryan Garlock in the 1st period. Phoenix closes the 1st period with 3 unanswered goals from Jackson, Kyrzakos and Rouleau. Phoenix leads 3-2 after the 1st period. Frank Rediker gets us back up on the board with a power play goal a minute and 37 seconds into the second period. Not much after that goal does Phoenix score once again 4 unanswered goals to end the 2nd period to let Phoenix Roadrunners with a wild 7-3 lead. Patrick Bordeleau nets his 2nd of the game nineteen seconds into the third period to make the score 7-4 Phoenix. Phoenix went on to win the game 7-4 final.

After the game I released the players that were up from Hamilton so that they could play in Hamilton’s training camp making the cut. The rest of the players that were not sent back will stay for the Jets main camp. Between September 9th and the 17th, the bulldogs are going to be playing eight pre-season games with the 10th off. In that day you will see Team OHL, Team ECHL, Team WHL and Team QMJHL each play two pre-season games as well as play each other in four scrimmage games as well. Some of these players will make the Bulldogs team and some will make the long Beach IceDogs team which ones who knows until camp is over.

September 9th 2006 – Here are the training camp Teams:

Team QMJHL (Team Blue in Scrimmages): Maxime Joyal; Jean-Claude Sawyer, Nathan Welton, Alexandre Dulac Lemelin, Pascal Lefebvre, Patrick Bordeleau, Kris McDonald, Philippe Bertrand, Alexandre Demers, Ladislav Scurko, David Laliberte, Mathieu Melanson, Adam Pineault

Team OHL (Team Red in scrimmages): Anthony Guadagnolo, Chris Chimienti, Andrew Hotham, Frank Rediker, Ryan Pottruff, Joe Grimaldi, Tyler Doig, Peter Franchin, Hunter Tremblay, Ryan Garlock, Tyler Harkins, Robbie Drummond, Trevor Kell, Jean-Michel Rizk, Cody Thornton

Team ECHL (Team Green in Scrimmages): Bryan Bridges, Dan LaCosta, Iain McPhee, Mike Madill, Corey Potter, Luis Tremblay, Casey Lee, Mitch Bartley, Dustin Jamieson, Tyler Metcalfe, Barrett Heisten, Evan Schwabe, Rane Carnegie, Jamie Tardif

Team WHL (Team White in scrimmages): Derek Yeomans, Clayton Barthel, Evan Haw, Cole Simpson, Max Gordichuk, Cody Thoring, Rob Klinkhammer, Chris Stevens, Aaron Gagnon, Eric Hunter, Reid Jorgensen, Jeremy Schenderling, Josh Aspenlind, Aaron Boogaard

Pre-season schedule:
Sept 9th ECHL vs Toronto
Sept 11th WHL vs Lowell
Sept 12th OHL vs. Quebec
Sept 13th QMJHL vs. Manitoba
Sept 14th ECHL vs. Houston
Sept 15th WHL vs. Providence
Sept 16th QMJHL vs. Omaha
Sept 17th OHL vs. Syracuse

Erik Westrum opened up the scoring for the Marlies 1:21 into the first period to lead the game 1-0. Toronto jumped up to a 3-0 lead in the second period with goals from Mitchell and Allard. In the third period Mitch Bartley got team ECHL on the board with a late third period goal but Toronto still walked away with the 3-1 win.

[MKoivuFan]

After the game we found out that Tyler Beechey from Manitoba Moose has agreed to the Jets offer and has signed with us.

September 10th 2006 – We are trying to get some vets for our young farm team down in Hamilton and we signed John Jakopin, Owen Fussey and Eric Manlow to contracts.

Hamilton is now up to 2,943 season tickets sold, Long Beach is now at 1,015 and Winnipeg is at 5,099.

Day one of Hamilton Bulldog’s training camp included physicals to evaluate the fitness of each player. Reporting to camp in the best shape were Rane Carnegie and Ryan Garlock. No one was found severely lacking in fitness.

First round of scrimmages in Hamilton’s Camp

Team QMJHL 2 – Team OHL 3
OHL: Hotham 1g 2a

ECHL 1 - WHL 3
WHL: Boogaard 2g; Hunter 2a; Gordichuk 1g 1a

So far this pre-season there has been one game and we have yet to win, lets see if the Team from the WHL league can get the job done. They are playing against Lowell Devils today. Lowell gets up on the board first with from Greene to lead the game after the 1st period 1-0. Nothing happen in the 2nd period still 1-0 for Lowell after the 2nd period, in the third period 5:45 to go Josh Aspenlind got the Bulldogs on the board. It was all the Bulldogs from there. Max Gordichuk scored a powerplay goal and Aaron Boogaard scored a empty net goal to win the game against Lowell, the final was 3-1.

I have been keeping notes about all of the players in scrimmages and during the pre-season games so that when the cuts have to be made I will be able to look at my notes and see which players have done well and which ones havn’t

Phoenix Roadrunners traded Scott Seney to Wheeling for Kevin Schieve.

September 12th 2006 – Ryan Garlock has been named captian of the OHl team that will play Quebec today. Robbie Drummond got Team OHL on the board first with help from Peter Franchin and Andrew Hotham. 8:44 mark Corey Locke tied the game for Quebec on the powerplay. The game is tied 1-1 after the 1st period. Five minutes and seventeen seconds into the second period, Quebec was down two men and was on a 5 on 3 penalty kill and some how they were able to score a goal. That’s pretty bad if the other team is down two players and they score on yea, a minute later Andrew Hotham scores to tie the game up at two. Corey Locke scored his second of the game to put Quebec back in the lead. Quebec leads the game 3-2 after the 2nd period. Ajay Baines gives Quebec a two goal lead when he scores nineteen seconds into the third period. Ryan Garlock put the bulldogs within a goal in the game with his third period goal. After Ryan’s goal Quebec has scored twice to double up on Hamilton goals as Quebec leads the game 6-3. Final score 6-3

The Quebec Junior League teams plays Manitoba tomorrow lets see how well they shape up against the AHL league.

September 13th 2006 – Today The Bulldogs coaches have been told that they have to make first cuts. Since we didn’t really look at the ECHL game much we can’t really make cuts from them but after today all of the junior league teams players will be cut from them after today’s game.

OHL 2 - ECHL 5
ECHL: Bartley 1g 2a; Lee 1g 2a

WHL 3- QMJHL 3

[MKoivuFan]

Today our Quebec prospects or junior league players play against the Moose, while our Jets are playing against the Lighting. Brandon Reid gets the moose up on the board first. Mike Brown put the moose up by two in the first period with his goal. Perrin scored for the Lighing and Mark Mowers came back with a goal of his own to tie the game in the 1st period. Manitoba leads 2-0 after the 1st period, The Jets and lighting game is tied 1-1 after the 1st period. Alexandre Demers cut the Moose’s lead in half when he scored his first goal of the game, at the end of the second period Moose leads 2-1. After the 2nd period in the Jets game Brad Richards made it 2-1 in the second period to take the lead gong into the third period. Bernier scored for the moose in the third period to make it 3-1. Bouck scored a shorthanded goal to put the game out of reach for the Bulldogs making it 4-1. Nathan Welton comes back with a power play goal fo his own to cut the score in half 4-2. Alexandre Demers scored his second goal of the game to cut the Moose lead down to one goal. The Adam Pineault and Alexandre Demers connection connects again as Pineault scored the game tying goal on the power play. Our last three goals in the third period were on the power play so the overtime period is going to be very hard and exciting. Jets lose 5-2 to the Lighting in pre-season. Nothing happened in overtime so were going to a shootout.

Hamilton:
Adam Pineault: Miss
Alexandre Demers: Miss
Patrick Bordeleau: Goal

Manitoba:
Schultz: goal
Reid: goal
Moran: goal
Goren: goal

After the game the following cuts were made:

Joe Grimaldi (OHL); Rob Klinkhammer (WHL); Josh Aspenlind (WHL) and Maxime Joyal (QMJHL)

The way I am going to do the rest of the cut, if players play very poorly in the next four games don’t matter which team they are they will be cut. Even though our camp doesn’t end for another four days, right now I have 12 players for my ECHL team and need another eight players and right the number of players I still have at camp it is going to be hard with the amount of players still around so there could be some more possible cuts after each game depends on how well they play in their teams game.

September 14th 2006 – Winnipeg Jets are in San Jose for their pre-season game against the Sharks and the Bulldogs are at home against the Aeros. In this ECHL game, Dan LaCosta will get the start for team ECHL, but after today Dan will play in net for the Quebec Junior team since their goalie got cut.

Mike Madill gets the team on the board first with a powerplay goal in the 1st period. Hamilton Leads 1-0 after the first period. Jets – Sharks game is tied at 0-0 at the end of the 1st period. Rane Carnegie makes the score 2-0 with a goal in the 2nd period. Dusty Jamieson scores on the powerplay to make it 3-0. It doesn’t stop from there, Jamie Tardif scores not one but 2 goals in the next three minutes to make it 5-0 in the second period. San Jose got goals from Michalek, Marleau and Thornton to lead the Sharks 3-0 over the Jets after 2 periods. Cameron comes into the third period and scores a power play goal to get Houston on the board and then just seven minutes later Potter scores his score on the powerplay to make it 6-1. That makes the final score of the game 6-1. Not a lot of players in Houston side of things they are all at Minnesota’s training camp. Mike Grier scored San Jose’s 4th goal as, Owen Fussey scores Jets loan goal for a 4-1 loss.

September 15th 2006 – Another round of scrimmages at Bulldogs camp

QMJHL 3 – WHL 3
OHL 1 – ECHL 3

Today even though camp doesn’t finish for another two days I have decided to cut camp short and do all of the cuts today that way the ECHL team has some time to play together. The only thing is I don’t know which of the three remaining goalies will be cut and which will be going to Long Beach to play for the IceDogs.

Hamilton beat Providence 7-1 today in pre-season action.

September 16th 2006 – Hamilton plays Omaha in Omaha and loses 2-1 to the Knights. After the game the players that were going to play in the ECHL and that were signed were assigned to the Long Beach today, the other ones had to wait till their contracts were signed.

Those players that were reassigned were: Clayton Barthel, Patrick Bordeleau, Robbie Drummond, Aaron Gagnon, Ryan Garlock and Max Gordichuk, Mathieu Melanson and finally Frank Rediker.

Also today Winnipeg Jets have assigned the following players down to Hamilton Bulldogs:

Tyler Beechey, Ramzi Abid, Owen Fussey, Jared Aulin, Nicklas Backstrom, Eric Manlow, John Jakopin and Joel Ward

September 17th 2006 – Today we assigned more players to the Long Beach Ice Dogs. We assigned Chad Starling, Evan Schwabe, Adam Pineault, Rane Carnegie, Aaron Boogaard, Tyler Haskins, Alexandre Demers, Jamie Tardif, Mike Madill, Pascal Lefebvre and Andrew Hotham.

Hamilton bulldog signed Luis Tremblay from the ECHL team but has decided to keep him up in the AHL for a bit before they decide if they want to reassign him or not.

We received some bad news today about prospect Devin DiDiomete today. After he was injured in our scrimmage this morning we have been told that he will be out of action for 8 months after he suffered a torn ACL.

Today both Hamilton Bulldogs and the Jets were playing pre-season games. Tyler Beechey had a hat trick and Luis Tremblay and Jared Aulin scored for Hamilton and for the Jets it was Andreas Lilja, Marcel Hossa and Troy Duncan who is at our camp as a tryout.

[MKoivuFan]

Today was the last day for the Hamilton Bulldogs training camp. Just waiting to read the reports from our scouts here in Hamilton of which players that are remaining unsigned of which of them I should sign and which ones I shouldn’t sign.

Long Beach has sold 1,019 season tickets, Winnipeg Jets have sold 5,127 tickets, and Hamilton Bulldogs have sold 2,957 season tickets so far this year.

September 19th 2006 – Winnipeg Jets have won their pre-season game today against the Wild by a score of 4-2. The players who scored the goals were Brian Willsie, Dominic Moore and Andreas Lilja. The oen that shocked me today of how well he did was Cory Emmerton who had 3 assists.

September 22nd 2006 – Hamilton is at home against the Citadelles. This time it’s the ahler players that are playing and not the junior teams. Quebec won 3-2 in a Shootout.

The juniored headed back to their junior team today as we didn’t offer any of them contracts but Nicklas Backstrom but he is a European playing for our farm team, Cory Emmerton had a good chance at making the club and he will get the same chance next year and could even possiblely make the team next yr.

Were looking for a number one goalie that can give Ty Conklin a run for his money so Toronto offered us Mikael Tellqvist and a 4th in 07 for rights to Nigel Williams and a 7th in 10.

Tellqvist will be a big help as Leighton can go down to Hamilton, and that 4th rounder will be a good pick come to this upcoming draft.

September 23rd 2006 – Carolina beat us 5-0 today in pre-season action.

September 24th 2006 – Winnipeg Jets have won their last pre-season game against the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 in shootout. Mowers and Papineau scored for us in regulation and Willsie, Metropolit and Chris Lee scored for us in the shootout.

After the Jets game, we assigned Chris Lee down to Hamilton. Also Hamilton had a pre-season game against Manitoba Moose. Hamilton also won their game 3-2. But this win was in regulation time. Abid, Eric Manlow and Duncan Milroy scored for the Bulldogs.

It was confirmed later tonight that the Tellqvist deal was going to go down in the books. Where got us a goalie to go fight with Ty Conklin for the starting goalie position.

Winnipeg jets have sold 5,209 season tickets, Hamilton have sold 2,970 tickets and Long Beach have sold 1,022.

September 26th 2006 – We traded Brad Bombardir to Phoenix who was really trying to go for him, traded us a 4th in 07 for Brad. We accepted the offer. With us trying to cut down our team and trying to get depth for our farm team we made two more deals. We sent Kevyn Adams to Toronto for Kris Newbury and Andy Wozniewski and the other deal we sent Matt Barnaby and Scott Parker to Columbus for Jason Chimera.

September 27th 2006 - We also picked up Wes Walz for his leadership that he had back in 2000 when Minnesota was an expansion team. When Kris and Andy showed up at our rink today after our morning practice I told them not to get comfortable b/c they were both being sent down to the minors.

Today Bulldogs signed David Shantz for our Long Beach team.

September 29th 2006 – Today we made two minor teams as we will have to get down to the 23 player roster and we didn’t want to lose anyone to waviers so I figured instead of sending them onto waviers we would trade them and try to get something for them.

First we traded Michael Ryan to San Jose for a 5th in 07, then we traded Mark Mowers to Ottawa for a 4th in 07.

[Systemfel]

You should get a TBL Blog and post your stuff there.