New West hockey is suffering

By Garth McLennan, Sports Editor

ew Westminster has a long
and storied tradition as a
sports town. For a city with

a relatively small population, we’ve
done well in producing our share

of top-notch athletes, particularly
hockey players. Stanley Cup-winning
goaltender Bill Ranford graduated from
New Westminster Secondary School
and also suited up for the city’s old
WHL franchise, the New Westminster
Bruins. Brent Hughes is a former
Boston Bruin and most recently, Kyle
Turris is settling into a starring role
with Wayne Gretzky and the Phoenix
Coyotes.

Yes, New West hasn’t had a
shortage of star hockey players in
the past. However, if current trends
continue, that won’t last much longer.
New Westminster is no longer the
hockey factory it once was. In years
past, promising New West prospects
would hone their skills and develop by
playing at home out of the legendary
Queens Park Arena, which has seen it’s
fair share of championships and great
moments over the years.

Now, however, talented players
with any sort of future in hockey are
leaving the New Westminster Hockey
Association (NWHA) to play out of
places like the Burnaby or North Shore
Winter Clubs.

The unfortunate fact is that junior
and pro scouts don’t come to New
West anymore. Due to a combination
of reasons, not the least of which is a
diminished enrolment rate, the NWHA
is unable to field highly competitive
teams, and as a result, the top players
naturally gravitate to higher-end
organizations where they’ll get more
exposure.

For example, while New West’s
younger teams at the Atom, Peewee
and Bantam levels tend to be quite
strong, the Midget A teams have been
brutal for years. The NWHA doesn’t
have enough players to field AA or
AAA squads, so players with the ability
to play high-end Midget hockey leave
New West for other places. There are
no junior clubs in New West to speak
of, and it’s creating a vicious cycle.
The best players leave, which means
the NWHA can’t put together teams at
elite levels which leads to New West
becoming virtually a scout-free zone.

It didn’t use to be that way. Once
upon a time the New Westminster
Bruins were the class of the WHL,
winning four consecutive league

\

Kyle Turris

 

championships to go along with a pair
of Memorial Cup titles back in the mid-
“70s. A number of players from their
ranks went on to hugely successful NHL
careers, people like Cliff Ronning, Mark
Recchi, Stan Smyl, Glen Anderson and
Olaf Kolzig.

After the Bruins closed up shop
in 1988 and relocated to Kennewick,
Washington (they now play as the
Tri-City Americans), the state of
competitive hockey in New Westminster
had steadily declined. Kyle Turris is a
perfect example. Ben Winnett, another
NWSS graduate who left New West
hockey early and is now playing for the
University of Michigan on a full ride
scholarship, is another. He was drafted
by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the fourth
round, 104" overall, back in the 2007
NHL Entry Draft.

At this stage, it’s difficult to find
a solution to the problem. The best
players in New West that don’t want to
commute to far away places do remain
in the NWHA, but they tend not to play
at the best available level Midget Ain
particular. The Midget A team has been
losing consistently for so long now that
players have become partial to playing
in the far less competitive house leagues,
also called Midge C hockey.

What needs to happen in order to
restore New Westminster to a position
where the best players want to stay
and play here is hard to determine. It’s
tough to pinpoint one specific fix to the
problem. Right now the vast majority of
minor hockey coaches in New West are
parent volunteers, and while there isn’t
anything wrong with that and many.do
a fantastic job, the best organizations
have trained, experienced coaches. That
leads down the road of developing better
players in the long run.

 

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totts.

    

Let’s hope cussing doesn’t
determine this year’s NBA champs
NBA’s technical foul rules too extreme

By Mark Fisher

he LA Lakers, who finished
first in the west during the

regular season, are headed to
the NBA Finals for the second straight
year after defeating the Denver
Nuggets in a thrilling six-game series.
They’ll face the NBA’s most improved
team, the Orlando Magic, who after
steadily improving for several years
and have become one of the league’s
elite franchises. The Lakers will be in
for the fight of their lives to prove that
they’re a better team now than they
were when they lost in the finals last
year.

But there’s the very real
possibility that the outcome of the
finals could be decided by an obscure
NBA rule that could lead to the
suspension of one or more of the best
players.

According to NBA rules, if a
player receives seven technical fouls
during the playoffs, they are given
a one-game suspension. Currently,
L.A.’s Kobe Bryant and Orlando’s
Dwight Howard both have five
technical fouls. Two more for either
and their team’s star player will be out.

So what is a technical foul,
you may be asking? Well, any non-
physical foul is considered a technical,
and most technical fouls are given out
are for unsportsmanlike conduct like
swearing and taunting. I’m not looking
forward to a finals where teams’
strategies are centered around trying
to get the other team’s best player to
swear at them, but that very well could
be what the finals hinge on.

What’s to stop a team from
putting one of their unimportant bench
players onto the court to intentionally
get into a ruckus with Dwight Howard
or Kobe? I’m reminded of a recent

  

ugly incident in the NBA playoffs two
years ago, when Phoenix’s Steve Nash,
the game’s MVP, was intentionally
bodychecked by San Antonio’s Robert
Horry, a.k.a. “Cheap Shot Rob.” Two
of Phoenix’s star players left the bench
but quickly returned to it without
interfering in the ruckus that followed
on the court. The NBA suspended
those players for a game, leaving a bad
taste in the mouth of many fans when
the Spurs went on to win that game
and the series. If a similar incident
happens in the finals between a bench
player and a star, expect criticism of
the League to reach a brand new level.

The NBA should get rid of this
“seven fouls and you’re out rule” so
they don’t risk a situation like this
happening. If someone swears or does
something unsportsmanlike, give the
other team some free throws. But
that’s no reason to force them to miss
a critical playoff game. If the fans
have to choose between having to
hear Kobe Bryant drop a few F-bombs
and having the game’s top star miss
a critical playoff game, which do you
think they’d rather have?

Technical fouls already carry
enough punishment along with them
without this rule. If a player receives
two technical fouls in the same game,
then they are ejected. Surely this is
enough incentive for players not to
commit technical fouls (not to mention
the obligatory free throws). In the
NBA playoffs where emotions run
high and the game is being played at
its highest level, the NBA is trying
too hard to control players’ emotions.
Seven incidents of swearing or
taunting spread out over 20 or more
games isn’t a good season to suspend
anyone, let alone one of the game’s
top stars.

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