The Whitecaps’ offseason of upheaval continues amid reports the club’s MVP, Camilo, is leaving for greener pastures and paycheques in Mexico. The only problem is, according to the Whitecaps, this isn’t even a possibility considering the Brazilian is still under contract with the team through 2014.
Vancouver Whitecaps FC forward Camilo is the ultimate love-him-or-hate-him kind of player. Whichever side of the fence you’re on, you can’t deny the game is more interesting with him on the pitch. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the head.
Adolfo Rios, chairman of Querétaro FC, contradicted this assertion on January 2nd, telling a website that Camilo’s reps at FootballBrazil had informed him the reigning MLS Golden Boot winner was a free agent.
Day one of the 2014 Great Northwest Showcase saw the UBC Thunderbirds earn a dramatic come-from-behind win over the seven-time NCAA Division 1 champions from the U of North Datoka. The Team Formerly Known as the Fighting Sioux, which features a dozen NHL draft picks, including World Junior Gold Medalist Rocco Grimaldi, is the first NCAA varsity team to play in BC since 1999*.
Zane Gothberg made 22 saves for the University of North Dakota, but it wasn’t enough. The UBC Thunderbirds tied the game with 52 seconds left in regulation, then salted it away in overtime at Bill Copeland Arena. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
The game offered up solid goaltending at both ends of the ice. Sophomore Zane Gothberg, a 2010 draft pick of the Boston Bruins, made 22 saves on 25 shots for UND, while keepers Matt Hewitt and Steven Stanford teamed up to make 26 saves for UBC.
Camilo scored the MLS goal of the year on a spectacular side scissor kick on October 9, 2013. Now rumours swirl of his impending exit from Vancouver Whitecaps FC. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
Ugh. I typed that headline five seconds ago and now I hate myself. NO. The answer is no. Probably no. Ok, the answer might be no, and I would almost certainly say definitely no if we hadn’t been burned before by the Whitecaps. There. You will find no buried ledes here.
As one would expect concerning the MLS Golden Boot winner, rumours have been swirling recently regarding the impending transfer of Camilo Sanvezzo to various locales. Look, up in the sky, it’s a transfer offer from Rosenborg, it’s a transfer offer from Tigres… NO! IT’S A TRANSFER OFFER FROM QUERÉTARO! Continue reading Is O Magico’s next act a disappearing one?→
At the beginning of the season, a lot of WHL players look at the calendar to see where the three-in-threes are. John Tortorella might wax poetic about his Canucks being a tired team after five games in nine nights, but when was the last time an NHLer hit the ice on three consecutive nights?
Thomas Foster scored once and added an assist as his Vancouver Giants beat the Prince George Cougars 5–2. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
The Vancouver Giants ended 2013 with a threefer, taking four of a possible six points despite travelling on the bus between each game. Sunday was the final game of the calendar year for the G-Men, and they made it count with a 5–2 win over the visiting Prince George Cougars. Jared Rathjen made 27 stops for his eighth win of the season, while both Carter Popoff and Thomas Foster had a goal and an assist at the other end of the rink.
It’s a game they should have won, but on that third night in a row, you never know which of the legs or the heart will show up. Sometimes you get both. Sometimes you get neither.
With the win, the Giants go into 2014 at five games over .500 and sit seventh place in the Western Conference. Their 45 points are one more than they had all last year, when they finished in the league basement. Making it all the more remarkable is the fact that the Giants started this year with a dismal 1–9 stretch to start the season. Since then, they’ve played solid two-way hockey, and gone 18–5–7.
We’ve heard a lot about Seattle’s sports culture over the past few years. Sounders supporters have baffled visiting MLS teams with their size and vocal nature, helping the squad make the playoffs in each of their first five seasons. The Seahawks “12th Man” mystique has grown as they’ve put together their best season ever, setting and then resetting the Guinness World Record for loudest public stadium in history.
Seattle goaltender Danny Mumaugh (@dannymumaugh) plays with the benefit of 4,000 screaming fans behind him nearly every night. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
Noise came as little surprise, then, when I hit up ShoWare Center for a Thunderbirds game against their cross-town rivals the Everett Silvertips. More than five thousand fans of both teams came out for the last weekend of 2013 for the second half of a home-and-home series. The building has a capacity of just over six grand, so 5K in the house meant ShoWare was one rockin’ barn for this tilt. It was an absolute treat to be a part of it — fans of the two teams playfully (if not particularly imaginatively) taunted each other all game, and screamed, gasped and bit their nails in all the right places.
Sure, Thunderbirds fans complain about the Everett cowbells, but deep down they love it. I mean, deep, deep down. Keep looking. It’s in there someplace.
Fans of the Seattle Thunderbirds and Everett Silvertips were loud, passionate, and dare I say it, FUN. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
You’re just a few shopping days away from the big Noël, and you’ve still got a few unchecked boxes on the naughty and nice list. Maybe one or two of those stockings belong to sports fans. Here’s just one idea for how to fill that bit of footwear that hangs on the mantle.
The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie
by Grant Lawrence $26.96 list price
$16.89 on Amazon.ca
Lonely End of the Rink is an autobiographical tale of how Grant Lawrence went from being a pre-teen King of the Nerds to a forty-something Kingpin of Beer League Rock ‘n’ Rollers.
Lawrence, ex-lead singer of The Smugglers and current King of the CBC 3, sketches out his childhood in terms of horrific geekdom, replete with knee braces, massive glasses, teeny tiny limbs and bad hair. There are Simpsons-esque episodes with fellow dweebs, beatings from bullies that would make Saruman the White proud, and verbal abuse from Seinfeldian gym teachers, who give him a lifelong hatred of being called by just his family name.
Grant Lawrence, shares his transition from King of the Nerds to King of in the Beer League Rock n Rollers in The Lonely End of the Rink.
That reminds me: in this here tome, thar be pop culture references out the wazoo. Lawrence Grant writes the way hipster radio presenters talk — not that there’s anything wrong with that. He sprinkles metaphors and similes on the page like Emeril hopped up on too much essence. On a single two-age spread (pp 76–77 if you’re interested), he references Harry Hamlin (BAM!), Clash of the Titans (BAM!), the Spartans laying waste to Arcadia (BAM!), Richard Brodeur, the Scream Machine roller coaster, Gollum, zombies, Popeye, and a gym teacher named only The Fire Hydrant (BAM! BAM! BAM!). Chapter headings — and the book’s title, for that matter — are all nods to hockey rock influences, from Alan Thicke to the Tragically Hip, from Dave Bidini & the Rheostatics to the aforementioned Jill Barber & her equally talented brother Matthew.
We get a few anecdotes from Grant’s time as the lead singer of the Vancouver-based Smugglers, but large doses of talk about the Flying Vees, a collection of musicians, artists and other creative types who dabble in rec league hockey wearing — you guessed it — Gibson Flying V guitars on their blue, green and white jerseys.
Grant Lawrence won’t win the Giller Prize anytime soon, but his conversational tone makes The Lonely End of the Rink a fast, entertaining read. Hockey plays the on-again, off-again romantic lead in the piece, even though we know our hero eventually settles down with sublime songstress Jill Barber. If you’ve even once heard a Top 10 list on CBC 3, you can’t help but hear the author’s voice in your head as you read his recollections of unsuccessful Vancouver Canucks runs to the Stanley Cup final. Thankfully, you can hear it & cheer as he recounts his own (admittedly unlikely) tournament wins, battling as an adult those childhood demons that still hang about the rink.
Grant may be small in stature, but he stands tall when he calls himself “still a gimpy, small, lopsided goaltender who always made the first move, who flopped like a wounded moth and let in way too many goals.” He may be called ‘The Guesser’ by bearded Ontarian rockers, but for starting up the Flying Vees, he’s forever ‘The Kingpin’ to his teammates. That’s probably why, at 41 years of age & drinking Black Label from the Duffers League championship trophy — seriously, man, ain’t there any craft beer in North Vancouver? — Grant was already thinking about the end of the off-season: “I couldn’t wait for the next hockey season to begin.”
The CBC’s Grant Lawrence makes a diving save with his mask during Duffers League action in North Vancouver. (The puck is actually visible under his neck protector if you look for it.) Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
It’s official — Carl Robinson has received the bump from Assistant Coach to Head Coach of the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club. Photo courtesy of Whitecaps FC.
This morning, Vancouver Whitecaps FC ended a protracted search for a new manager and settled on Carl Robinson as the 15th head coach in club history. Well-liked by his players, the former assistant coach under Martin Rennie brings a wealth of experience at both the highest levels of English soccer, having played in the Premier League for both Portsmouth and Sunderland, and the lowest levels of Canadian soccer, having spent several years at TFC.
The Vancouver Giants received a lump of coal in their Christmas stockings Sunday night, as their seven-game home win streak was snapped by the Prince George Cougars. It was just the third regulation loss in 19 games for the Giants, who remain in seventh place in the Western Conference going into the Christmas break.
Carter Popoff (@carter_popoff) opened the scoring for the Vancouver Giants, but the Giants dropped a 3–1 decision to the Prince George Cougars going into the Christmas break. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
Carter Popoff scored his tenth of the year at 17:02 of the first period, a beauty of an individual effort. Popoff poke checked Zach Pochiro at the Cougar blueline, then held the puck on a 2-on-0 break and made a slick deke around a sprawling Ty Edmonds to open the scoring.
However, Vancouver gave up two in quick succession to start the second. Pochiro and Jordan Tkatch scored goals for the Cougars just 25 seconds apart for a lead they would never relinquish. Other than that brief lapse in the second period, the Giants dominated play, pouring 42 shots on Edmonds — including 25 in the second period alone — but couldn’t manufacture the tying goal in front of 6,324 fans. Klarc Wilson added an insurance goal with one second remaining into an empty net. Edmonds, who picked up his 11th win on the season, was the unanimous choice for first star honours ahead of Vancouver skaters Brett Kulak and Tyler Benson.
Giants goaltender Payton Lee stopped 23 of 25 shots in the loss. It was the third game in three nights for both teams, who each went 0-for-4 on the power play, including a five-minute major in the third period to Giants captain Dalton Thrower for a high open-ice elbow.
Prince George goaltender Ty Edmonds stopped 41 of 42 Vancouver Giants shots en route to a 3-1 win at the Pacific Coliseum. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
Vancouver Giants goaltender Jared Rathjen earned his first ever WHL shutout with a 3–0 win over the Everett Silvertips on Friday night. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
Roberto Luongo wasn’t the only goaltender to throw a goose egg on Friday night. Down the street, Jared Rathjen made 22 saves against the Everett Silvertips to earn the first shutout of his WHL career.
Thousands of stuffed animals were collected for local children’s charities when Trent Lofthouse opened the scoring at 9:04 of the second period. Rathjen (@JRathjen33) didn’t get teddy bears rained down upon him for his work, but he stifled four Everett power play opportunities and kept the league’s fourth leading scorer, left winger Joshua Winquist, off the board. It’s just the second time since October 20th that Winquist has failed to hit the score sheet.
More, including quotes from Rathjen, after the jump.
The Abbotsford Heat spanked the Iowa Wild 6–2 on Wednesday. They skated, they hit, they looked like they wanted to win, and they scored a couple of lucky goals to boot. Joni Ortio made several impressive saves en route to his twelfth win of the season, and Ben Street scored a pair to bring his AHL season total to 16 goals in 22 games.
Iowa Wild forward Erik Haula scored twice to power his team past the Abbotsford Heat Thursday night. Photo by Jason Kurylo for Pucked in the Head.
The following night, the home side played decidedly less inspired hockey, and Joey MacDonald fought the puck on two questionable goals and several iffy rebounds. The Heat deservedly hit the L column to end the homestand with a 4–2 loss.
