First, people who planned on seeing the Portland Winterhawks live in Training Camp as part of the Neely Cup won’t be able to. With ongoing renovations at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum and limited space at the Sherwood Ice Arena, where the Hawks are practicing and the Neely Cup is taking place, they have decided to close to the public.
The first chance to see the Hawks in any action will be as part of the Everett tournament on September 6. In the meantime, the Hawks will conduct the Neely Cup as usual and see only a handful of overage players partake. The schedule will see games played on Thursday and Friday afternoons, with games played in the morning and finals in the evening.
The Winterhawks will film the games and have announced that highlights and updates will be posted to the website, www.winterhawks.com.
The Neely Cup teams are named after former Winterhawks who made an indelible mark during their time here. Oliver Bjorkstrand, Chase De Leo, Joe Mahon, and Brett Ponich will be the listed teams, with 77 players attending camp.
On the Bjorkstrand team, Marek Choloupka, whom the Hawks signed in the imports draft, will play, as will Hawks Hudson Darby, Josh Zakreski, and Alex Thompson. Hudson’s brother Griffen, who just signed with the Hawks, will also be on this team. Ondrej Stebetek, the other import player drafted, will be manning the nets. This means Jan Spunar’s potential return is all but naught.
Kyle McDonough, Tyson Yaremko, and Carter Southern will be on the De Leo team. Cru Hanas played last with the Wenatchee Wild and came in as a 19-year-old.
The Mahon team features Ryder Thompson and Luke Brunen, with Ryan Millar, who also played for the Hawks last year but missed the Neely Cup due to shoulder surgery. Carsyn Dyck, who was one of the final cuts from the Hawks last year, will also be on this roster.
Team Ponich will see Braeden Joachims, Kyle Chyzowski, Cole Slobodian, and Tyson Jugnauth.
Jan Spunar and several other players expected to turn pro are not listed, whether in North America or Europe.
When looking at the team, Brunen and Stebetek will most likely man the pipes. Both netminders from the previous year, Nick Avakyan and Justen Maric, are not at camp and most likely won’t figure into this year’s team plans.
This leaves several open spots in the roster to choose from, and we expect tough competition to follow.
The Hawks also graduated several of its in-house staff to positions within the NHL. Head Scout Mike Coffin is headed to the Calgary Flames, Clayton Johns, as Equipment Manager, is off to the Ontario Reign farm team of the Los Angeles Kings, and Brenden Burke now travels to the Hartford Wolfpack farm team of the New York Rangers as goaltender coach, Peter Dewar who worked much of the website, media relations will now do so for the Carolina Hurricanes.
With that, the Hawks moved Matt Davidson from Alberta Head Scout to Director of Player Personnel; Greg Sampson will now be the Assistant to the GM and Director of US Scouting. Travis Hoy comes on board as the Hawks’ new goaltending coach. Scouting positions will see Cory Gibbons, US, Chris Jacobson, Saskatchewan (a former 1998 Memorial Cup winner with the Hawks), and Ryan Scheer as the new equipment manager. Ryan helped Clayton Johns over the past three years while working with the White Rock Whalers of the PJHL, so he’ll fit in quickly.
