Monday, March 10, 2008

Alumni Extra: Glencross Notes

I have a hard and fast rule about only writing about current Seawolves. I do so primarily for selfish reasons; the amount of time that it takes to follow everyone and do a fair job of it is simply too much for me. It's great that over the last couple of years that Doyle Woody started blogging because he does a good job of following ex-Seawolves and providing updates. I had noticed a couple of newsworthy bits regarding Curtis Glencross this past week and waited to see Doyle make note of them on his blog but it didn't come. So faced with emailing Doyle and hoping he'd note these things or just posting them myself; I figured I could break my rule just this once.

The Edmonton Oilers hosted a team skills competition to a sold out Rexall Arena last week. Curtis Glencross won the fastest skater competition. That was a nice surprise since teammate Shawn Horcroff had actually won the last NHL All-Star game competition and most Oiler fans assumed that Andrew Cogliano was the fastest player on the squad. Perhaps the bigger surprise here though is that Curtis won the event with an "unofficial" NHL record time of 13.37 seconds. Wows.



The other interesting tidbit is a featured radio interview with Curtis on the Oilers weekly radio show. Curtis talks about his time in Anchorage briefly. You can listen to that entire interview by clicking on this link. Curtis has had a nice first full season in the NHL. So far this season he has 9 goals and 9 assists in 49 games, is a +6 overall and has done that playing an average of about 12 minutes per game. Curtis becomes an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. With all the nice additions to his resume this season he looks to substantially increase his $550,000 a year salary.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Alumni and the Avalanche.How about Dean Larsen geting screwed by the owners and what happened to the new regime bringin in the bigtimers to run the program right?? Nothing but horrible management decisions..sound familiar

Anonymous said...

Is that the same Keith Morris that was an assistant coach for UAA? I had him as coach in my hockey class, he was a nice guy, don't know anything about his coaching other than he was let go of.

Donald Dunlop said...

I think I discussed the Avalanche BS back when it happened. Lars and Millen didn't want to commit to an "All Alaskan" roster and the ownership was all about putting as many AK kids on the roster as possible. In a perfect world they could build a good franchise that way but Lars and Millen recognized that the world isn't perfect and to build a winning team you have to get the best players you can get regardless of where they come from. So they parted ways. I think Morris was originally hired as the GM and now he is "player development and operations". With another tough season coming to a close I'd think there will be a lot of pressure to succeed next year. They had 8 Alaskan's on their roster this year and I'd bet dollars to donuts they'll have a bigger number next year. So the whole can you build a successful team with local players argument is still up in the air.

Anonymous said...

Saw Morris and Woody at the last UAA home game standing and watching the entire game. Morris kept pointing and jestering to the ice like a coach and Woody was just lapping it up like he was learning the game from a master. Made me sick to think what they are saying about UAA hockey. And to think that BJ Youngs nephew, Alex, plays for the Avalanche, is a stud of a kid at 6'2 and 210lbs. Also another kid, Jeremiah Dargis is a Wasilla kid with good size and skill plays there. They were both recently invited to a tournament in Ann Arbor Mi. Alex wants to play at UAA, Dargis wants to play college pucks. Be nice if they were both good fits for UAA and we kept them close to home.

Anonymous said...

Young and Dargis are average players at best. They are not difference makers for the Avalanche...if you can't stand out in the NAHL, you'll have a tough time finding an NCAA scholarship.
Which tournament were they "invited" to? There are a handful of players on the current Avs roster that are better players than those two.

Anonymous said...

Doyle Woody actually attended a UAA game? Wow.

As far as the Av's players, we attended a few of their games this year. Their goalie Dusan Sidor was fantastic in the games we watched, but got little help from his D.

We also liked the speed and stick handling skills of the Anchorage kid Tyler Currier. Last Saturday night he had THREE breakaways and was responsible for causing two odd man rushes. He ran into a hot Minnesota goalie.

Can't say as I was overly impressed with either player mentioned here, but in less you go to the majority of games it's hard to say. Every player has their good and bad games.

Donald Dunlop said...

If I were talking to any kid in the NAHL it would be Sergei Korostin of the Texas Tornado who is a teammate of Gustav Bengtson.

He's a 3rd round draft pick of the Dallas Stars and no doubt they'd like to find a good development situation for him.

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