News and Notes

Why don't we just jump into it, eh?

-  The team announced their protected list. As usual, it takes four or five reads through to figure out the rules behind these things.

- The Lee County Board of Commissioners recognized the Everblades at a recent meeting.

- The Everblades renewed their affiliation with the Tampa Bay Lightning. We will have a new AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, due to the Bolts choosing not to continue their affiliation with the Norfolk Admirals.

- We had our first player sign overseas. Mike Ratchuck is off to play in the Austrian hockey league with the Slovenian team Olimpija Ljubljana.

- The ECHL gave the Blades an award for ticket department of the year. Yay!

- On top of the Bolt's vs. Canes preseason game in Orlando, the Panthers and Bolts will be playing a preseason game... at Germain! I'm ridiculously excited about this.

Hopefully, the team starts announcing signing soon. Things are going to get a little boring around here if they don't.

Goodbyes and Affiliation News

There has been lots of little bits and pieces of news over the last few days. Since I'm feeling oddly productive today (I never feel like this on a Monday), I thought I'd do a round-up of everything that's been going on.

First, some Goodbyes.

Two more players have left for the Elite Ice Hockey League. Both Mike Bayrack and Mike Hoffman have signed with the Belfast Giants (All the logos in the EIHL are super hideous for some reason). I'm not going to miss Hoffman, he played for one game before signing with the Syracuse Crunch. I will miss Mike Bayrack though.

He's was probably one of the most experienced hockey players in the entire ECHL last season (he should hit 1,000 regular season games while playing for the Giants).  He was a great presence on the ice, and he was a pretty nice dude.

Eric Lampe has also signed an agreement with the Syracuse Crunch (they love poaching our players I guess). I don't blame him for opting for an AHL contract, and I don't blame the Crunch for signing him. He was one of the best players  in the playoffs, and deserves to get noticed. I just wish one of our affiliates had done the noticing.

Now, on to affiliations!

This of course means it's spreadsheet time!

As you can see, the Greenville Road Warriors have announced two new affiliations. They'll be receiving players from the Rangers and Flyers. This leaves the Canadiens and the Wild as the last two NHL teams without an ECHL affiliate (that had one last season at least). I'm still holding to my belief that the Wild will sign with Bakersfield (the only team without an affiliate). My best guess is that the Canadiens will sign with Kalamazoo Wings. It makes sense location wise, and really, what player wouldn't want to wear these awesome jerseys (and helmets) during warm-ups?

News and a Goodbye

I have no idea why I forgot to mention this earlier, but Milan Gajic will not be retuning to the Everblades next year. He has signed with the Victoria Salmon Kings.

Last season was rough on him. He was injured very early on, and it took a long time for him to heal. When he finally did come back he put up some spectacular numbers. If you take a  look at his stats it not hard to imagine that without the injury, last season could have been one of the best of his professional career.



As I have said many times before, it's sad to see any of the players leave. To see such a solid forward, and such a nice person leave is almost painful. I don't blame him for choosing to play in Victoria, he's spent three seasons playing for them, but I'm still sad.

In some less depressing (for me at least) news The Florida Panthers have signed an affiliation agreement with the Kelly Cup Champion Cincinnati Cyclones. It also appears the Cyclones chose not to announce they're no longer affiliated with the Montreal Canadiens. They instead chose to change their website to omit the Habs and include the Panthers. I guess they thought no one would notice?

The South Carolina Stingrays also announced they have extended their affiliation with the Washington Capitals for another season.

I'm really expecting the announcement of a new signing tomorrow. The last time I was in Venice they announced the affiliation with the Lightning. I'm sure the announcement tomorrow will be a good one.

Affiliation News!

(Since I'm putting this post up so late tonight Friday Links will be up sometime after noon)

It looks like the Blades decided the best way to handle being dumped by the Panthers was to buddy up with their cross state rivals. You may remember (from my awesome spreadsheet) that the Tampa Bay Lightning were sending their prospects from the Norfolk Admirals to a CHL team. Apparently, the new regime in Tampa is smarter than that, and opted to go with an ECHL affiliate instead. If you're interested,you can check out some info on their prospects in Norfolk here.

In a (kind of) weird coincidence. The Norfolk area used to have an ECHL team named the Hampton Roads Admirals. I happen to have a jersey from their junior team. Of course, I also have jerseys from the short lived Russian Penguins and the Greenville Grrowl too. Maybe I need to stay away from ebay.

There were two other affiliation announcements made recently. The Jackals announced an agreement with the Anaheim Ducks, and the Kalamazoo Wings announced an agreement with the New York Islanders.

There are two ECHL teams who have no affiliate, Greenville and Bakersfield. I would put good money on The Wild signing an agreement with Bakersfield. The Rangers, Panthers and Flyers don't have too many options if they want an affiliate in the East. If you take a look at the ECHL location map and compare it to the aaffiliation chart. You'll see the only real options available (this doesn't include Trenton and Wheeling as their owned by their parent clubs and seem to be kept on a short leash) in the East are Greenville and South Carolina.


View ECHL Team Locations in a larger map



 The teams could decide to use the CHL. They could also arrange to send players to an ECHL team without an affiliation agreement (if they  do this, won't be able to call-up players that have an ECHL contract), the team could also tough it out until next year, and hope a good option for them becomes available. As always, we won't know until it happens. Until then, I guess I have to check out our new affiliates schedule to see when I'll be heading up North.