Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Kamal Featured In SI: Young Goaltenders


Seawolves goaltender Chris Kamal is featured today at the Sports Illustrated website in this article by Darren Eliot in his "View From The Ice" column.  Darren details Chris' achievements this season as well as his pre-UAA goaltending background with which you may or may not be familiar.

He tells the story of Chris' year long rehabilitation during his junior career ...
After playing at Gilmour Academy in Ohio and for the Green Mountain (Vermont) Glades of the Eastern Junior Hockey League, Chris had to take a year off for surgery and rehabilitation after one of his legs was crushed in a freak accident while he was working a summer job -- where else? -- at a rink in 2008. A motorized handcart pinned his leg against a storage bin during a maintenance session in which Chris was part of the hired cleanup crew. He was 19 at the time, and without a team. Idled by the injury and on the couch at midseason, unable to do anything but think about what might have been, he declared to his dad, "I want to contact every team in the (North American Hockey League) and let them know about me."

 Make sure to go to the website link provided above to read the entire article.  Features like this are usually rare for Seawolves players due to the extreme geographic location of the school.  This one is great to see however.  

My thanks to commenter "A Seawolves Fanatic" for pointing it out.  To other readers, I'm not all seeing and all knowing ... so if you come across something let me know in the comments section or forward me an email so we can share with other UAA fans.

6 comments:

Suze said...

Great article! Thanks so much for the link, I would have missed this. I love feel good stories, especially when it is about a Seawolf!

Props to Shyiak for giving Kamal a shot.

Anonymous said...

The Seawolves are showing signs of creating a flow to their game. The reason? They're starting to believe in their goalies. In recent years past one could just feel in their game a fear to make mistakes. Knowing someone between the pipes will save your ass makes good things happen. Both freshman goalies have made the difference this year. Congrats to both. And, yes, I too would like to know a team who blocks more shots. But it comes with a price. Kudos to the special teams who I know are playing injured. -30-

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear all of the players have some battle wounds. I hope Bailey is able to make the playoffs.

As far as the fan favorite voting goes, too bad we have to choose! Portwood would have made the list if I had my way, he is a workhorse that blocks a ton of shots and makes things happen that lead to scoring opportunities.

Good luck this weekend guys, we believe in you!!

Anonymous said...

Link to a StarTribune story on the UAA/Gophs game this weekend:
http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/blogs/117629983.html

Donald Dunlop said...

Anonymous,
LOL ... You were reading my mind or I was reading yours as I just finished a post linking to that. I was doing my last blog check of the day before hitting the sack and saw it. Thanks for the heads up in any case ... all good info.

Anonymous said...

Its funny cuz I would never saw that article if it wasn't for the pretty darn good coverage of UAA Hockey on Facebook haha. And yeah, Parkinson is running away with the fan favorite award(86%), right now nobody else has double figure percentages!

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