Because this time last week, he was winning the Stanley Cup, and because he’s from an unusual corner of the world (at least in terms of producing hockey players), Trevor Lewis is our inaugural Man of the Week!

Trevor Lewis

Born January 8, 1987 (age 25) in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Center/right wing for the Los Angeles Kings

Lewis hails from Utah, home of just two other NHL players (only one other, Richard Bachman, is currently active–he too is from SLC). He was selected 17th overall by the Kings in 2006 when he was coming off a big 75-point, Junior Player of the Year Award season with the Des Moines Buccaneers of the USHL.

Los Angeles put him on an entry-level contract and he played with the Owen Sound Attack for a season to hone his skills before entering the LA system. First he was sent off to the Manchester Monarchs, where he spent most of the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons and was called to California for just about five games each year. During this time, he also played for America at the 2007 World Juniors and got a bronze medal. But for 2010-11, he became a full-time King.

This year, he really got to show off his beard-growing skills.

In his first full season in LA, he scored 13 points in 72 games, plus four points in the Kings’ six-game playoff appearance. But this year, while his production dipped slightly during the regular season (to seven points in, again, 72 games), he became a big help during the Kings’ run to the Stanley Cup. He scored three goals and helped out six more times. Plus, he signed a two-year deal in July 2011, so he’ll be in Southern California for at least another year.

Now to wonder if he’s ever seen SLC Punk…

Lewis is the one on the left on the front bus, #22, with his fist in the air.

Can’t believe it’s been a year already. What a series and what a big decisive win on Vancouver ice. I’m rewatching Game 7 right now and just so many things, so many FEELS:

• Of course, Tim Thomas‘ strength in net. Things have changed, no one is really sure what is going on anymore, a few learned minds are starting to theorize that we saw Thomas’ last game as a Bruin back in April, etc., but last summer, Thomas was king and his accolades were well-earned. He pretty much won All of the Awards and his performance completely merited them.
• The sheer SPEED of Mark Recchi. At 43 years old, the guy still had wheels like a speedy rookie. There’s one point where he gets a breakaway and quite nearly stuffs it past Roberto Luongo, but Luongo makes the stop. Still, not bad for a man who was born when Lyndon B. Johnson was in office.
• Patrice Bergeron scoring the official Cup-winning goal plus the one that he put away while he was sliding on his stomach. Of course I’m happy my favorite player has what’s officially the big winner. He just works so hard no matter what. After what he’s been through, he deserves all the glory he can get. Like the Selke next week!
• The way the guys allow themselves a moment, just a moment of celebration after Brad Marchand puts away the empty-netter. But then they sit back down and get back into serious business mode.
• Vancouver just deflates. Eventually you can just sense it; it seems like all the gas is out of the tank and their tires are deflated. They had a long season and fought hard, but it wasn’t enough.
• Of course Recchi is the first to get the Cup from Zdeno Chara. As it should be. Recchi’s a good guy and I hope he does come back to the Bruins in some front-office form as I’ve read he just might do.
• Speaking of Chara, the way he involves the team–like how he turns around and points to them when going to the Cup. He knows this is not just about him and he wants to give everyone credit for their roles in the victory.

The Bruins endured and fought quite a lot last year to get all the way to the Final and maybe they just ran out of gas early this year. But with Peter Chiarelli doing a lot to keep the old band together, as it were, I can tell he knows that 2012 was just an off playoff season. He knows that these guys are capable of getting to the top again. He’s very clever, that one, and I have faith that they’ll be back up there hoisting Lord Stanley’s Cup soon. I don’t think we’ll even have to wait nearly 40 years this time.

 

First of all, congratulations to the Los Angeles Kings, your 2012 Stanley Cup champions! Congrats also to Jonathan Quick, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy for MVP.

The finals started out with what seemed like a total domination of the New Jersey Devils by the Kings. I’d watched the Devils from their series with Florida, and even when they’d lose a game, they’d bounce back with gusto. They fought to seven games with the Panthers, to five with the Flyers and to six each with the Rangers and Kings. But something happened between the Eastern Conference Final and and the Stanley Cup Finals. Maybe they were tired, maybe they relied on their big names too much – Ilya Kovalchuk and his back problems come to mind – but something didn’t click like it had. Sure, they won two games in a row, but it wasn’t enough in the end. Still, I liked watching the game, and it was an exciting way to cap off Emma’s and my first full season as hockey fans.

Emma here. I think the reason that Krista and I enjoyed watching the game, but didn’t get super emotionally affected by it, may be that we’re just too attached to our teams. Some folks did, some folks didn’t and that is okay! Still, isn’t it cool that three leagues had their biggest prizes go to teams in “nontraditional” markets? The Stanley Cup resides in LA, the Calder Cup is calling Norfolk, Virginia home and the Kelly Cup is in Estero, Florida. That just proves that you can have hockey anywhere so long as you can build yourself a building and control the climate–and that’s pretty awesome.

Still, late last night I had to reminisce about last year. It’s not the proper anniversary yet, so I’ll hold my thoughts until then, like Krista did on Chicago’s anniversary.

Again, congrats to the Kings. History has once again been made.

Today happens to be the anniversary of the Chicago Blackhawks winning their Stanley Cup, so I sat here watching my 2010 Stanley Cup Champions DVD and clips of the game winning goal. I wasn’t into hockey yet at that time, but I can still feel pride over their win.

(Incidentally, I found it both hilarious and awkward that Daniel Carcillo was put in Game 2 of the Finals. Who knew that, two seasons later, he’d be playing for the team he opposed.)

I wanted to post this clip because it features commentary by John Wideman and Troy Murray, the guys who call the games on WGN Radio (I feel like we became good friends because of my lack of Center Ice). It has to be one of the most famous calls in recent Stanley Cup history.

It’s a bit hard to watch now, since so many of the guys on that magical team are gone – Kris Versteeg, John Madden, Brian Campbell, Tomas Kopecky and even former assistant GM Dale Tallon are in Sunrise with the Florida Panthers; Dustin Byfiglien and Andrew Ladd (ew) are in That Place; Troy Brouwer is with the Capitals…the list goes on. But we still have our core, and the memories of that season can be an example for the new guys and fuel the team to another Cup run. The last two years may have been shaky, but the team’s getting strong again.

Happy Cup anniversary, boys. We’ll get it next year.

- Krista

Seems like only yesterday that the two of us decided to put our love of hockey in blog form. But now Adventures in Pucking is a year old!

What’s a birthday/anniversary without awesome cupcakes?

We do have a few things up our sleeves for the near future, and we thought we’d use today to let you in on them:

First, say hello to Krista, who FINALLY took a picture in her 2010 SC Champions shirt (cameo by the puck she got for Christmas). That shirt happens to be the official shirt the team was given in the locker room.

Please excuse the crappy picture quality. – K

This is Emma, who doesn’t have the exact same shirt the champs wore in the Bruins locker room, but does have gifts from kind friends: the Bruins shirt, playoff rally towel and two out of three of the roster posters visible there.

Also, Tim Thomas on the Bruins calendar. OH NO, FEELS -E

We know that Man of the Day just kind of disappeared when playoffs started. Things went totally cray and eventually we just decided there needs to be some sort of makeover. So as to make it easier on the both of us, we’re gonna move to a Man of the Week format and maybe focus on minor league, college or non-North American players if enough information is available. (It may be difficult to find English-language information on some players, for example.)

Rest assured that we’ll still cover what’s coming up shortly: a wrapup of the Stanley Cup Finals, the NHL Awards, the draft and the madness that is free agency. We’ll also keep you guys up to date on the latest news. Before you know it, September will be here again, and you know what that means – training camp and preseason!

We’ve loved sharing our love of the game with all of you, and we promise to continue to do that.

- Emma and Krista

Yesterday, I was putting together my daily Today in Boston Bruins History article, which covers birthdays of past and present Bruins, milestones good and bad, past games, etc. After I was done putting in all the birthdays–big ups to Hockey-Reference for the database, which is amazing–I got to 2011 and realized wow, it’s been a year since Game 3.

I remember exactly where I was that night: parked on the couch, game on the HDTV, doublescreening (which is apparently what it is called when you are watching TV and using the Internet simultaneously, often marked by livetweeting the show you’re watching), thinking everything was going well and dandy except the Bruins hadn’t scored yet.

Then it happened, the Aaron Rome hit on Nathan Horton. I watched it live, frightened, upset because I knew quite a bit about traumatic brain injuries from when my mom was in grad school in the early 2000s learning more about the inner workings of our gray matter and I knew this probably was not going to be good. The way Horton helplessly had his arm raised, his eyes rolled back, unable to move…oh, it’s hard to think about even now. (Watching it happen on the champions DVD is still too difficult.) I distinctly remember saying “Oh my God, something bad has happened” as it unfolded.

Of course, we know now how it progressed from there– Horton went to nearby Massachusetts General (thank God for hospitals near sports arenas is all I have to say; take Philips Arena’s proximity to Grady Memorial, one of the most advanced hospitals in Georgia–its closeness may have really helped Ondrej Pavelec when he had that collapse in the 2010-11 season opener), updates were provided throughout the game as he moved all his extremities, the Bruins were otherwise preoccupied during their long power play but then ripped the game wide open in the second and third periods.

It was a turning point in the series, though. Discussing it with a friend recently, we decided the gentlest way to put it was that the team galvanized around a terrible incident and produced good from the bad. Hey, the Bruins are the Hufflepuffs of the NHL, after all, watching out for their own. But it really did change the course of the series.

Last night, I was parked on the couch again, doublescreening like a boss, watching as the Devils dashed all hopes of a Kings sweep, Kings inevitability, all of that. Some of it still remains (I seriously saw a headline that said something to the effect of “Devils delay the inevitable” and a lot of postgame coverage had little weasel words suggesting that the media would really like it better if New Jersey didn’t mess with their narrative by, you know, winning), but this is the Final we’re talking about here. Who knows what could happen at any given game? Could this be the start of a Devils bounceback that would cement a place in history? Or is this going to be the year that history is made for another California team? As we saw a year ago, series shifters can come from anywhere, good or bad.

I guess we’ll just have to see what happens on Saturday!

PS: Last night, I ordered the ~special edition~ of the Bruins championship DVD. It includes Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final and Games 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the Final. When it arrives, I’ll be sure to review it!

As a Criminology and Justice Studies major, when something pings on my legal radar, I get curious and must investigate. This time, the ping was about Detroit Red Wings forward Todd Bertuzzi and his impending civil case dating back from his days with the Vancouver Canucks.

I mentioned back in April, when Raffi Torres was given his 25-game suspension, that Bertuzzi was given a 20-game suspension in March 2004 after he viciously hit Steve Moore in the back of the head. After sitting out of IIHF competition and after the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Bertuzzi was allowed to play again. Moore was forced to retire as a result of the hit. But that was the least of Bertuzzi’s troubles.

There was the criminal investigation in 2004 in which he was charged through the British Columbia courts with assault causing bodily harm, a charge that carried a sentence of up to 18 months in prison. He eventually made a deal with the prosecutors, pled guilty and got a year’s probation and 80 hours of community service, and after he served all that, it wouldn’t give him a criminal record. Was Steve Moore angry? Oh yeah, and he let the court know that in a victim impact statement he gave by letter (he couldn’t get there in time for the sentencing).

Then came the civil suits. First was one filed in Colorado in 2005, but it was thrown out when the judge decided the case was better suited for the Canadian courts. In 2006, Moore again filed a civil suit, this time in the Ontario courts. After rejecting two settlements (including one from Bertuzzi and Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment – the company the owns the Canucks – for $350,000) and raising the damages, the trial is finally going to go through in either September or October.

Now comes news from the CBC that should Moore prevail in his civil suit, the costs will be divided between Bertuzzi and Orca Bay. They originally wanted that info to remain private, but because Bertuzzi and Orca Bay dropped the lawsuits they’d brought against each other, it came out in the open. To paraphrase Moore’s lawyer, it sounds like the cross-claims were a ploy to cover up their agreement.

That’s just the really, really condensed version. After reading the details of the civil suit’s history in the courts, I think I’ll just stick to criminal law.

In any event, Bertuzzi will be on trial in civil court this fall. I was taught that the difference between the weight of evidence in civil and criminal trials is this: in criminal trials, you have to be 95% certain that there’s guilt; in civil trials, you need only 51% certainty to find for the plaintiff. Based on that, we might just see Todd Bertuzzi’s wallet become a bit lighter in the near future.

- Krista

As Emma wrote in her Worlds wrapup last month, Team Slovakia won silver and paid tribute to Pavol Demitra, a former teammate who was killed in the tragic plane crash that took the lives of the entire Yaroslavl Lokomotiv team last fall. When the team returned to Slovakia, Tomas Kopecky visited Demitra’s grave and brought along his silver medal.

The following video is in Slovak, but you’ll get the sentiment. Grab tissues before you watch.

Ah, Rick Nash. Remember on trade deadline day when he was the talk of the town, the veritable belle of the ball, and yet he ended up not switching dance partners? Well, now in this offseason, the talks are back in full swing, baby. I’ve seen a lot of speculation about the Bruins picking him up, which is really odd because to me the price is way too high–and that’s only in terms of trade, not in terms of his salary/cap hit. (Columbus wanted two of these three: Milan Lucic, Tyler Seguin and/or Dougie Hamilton; one of either Jared Knight or Ryan Spooner plus a first-round draft pick, according to things I’ve seen, and it is literally just laughably absurd.)

But it got me to thinking–has Columbus GM Scott Howson been shopping around? Maybe he’s been sending out feelers to each team. Let’s take a look at the pitches he’s made to all 29 other teams. Please note that, to our knowledge, all of these are not real. Although…who knows…?

Anaheim: Disneyland tickets, the chance to gaze into Bobby Ryan‘s eyes and Angels tickets with free hot dogs and beer.

Boston: See above, plus free cannoli from Mike’s Pastry (Mike Modano tested and approved!)

Buffalo: A lifetime supply of Buffalo wings and keys to the pool at Patrick Kane‘s house.

Calgary: VIP access to the Calgary Stampede–and a hug from Jarome Iginla. (Actually, who wouldn’t want that?)

Carolina: Unlimited barbecue and courtside tickets to his choice of Duke or UNC basketball games.

Chicago: The entire core of the team and Lollapalooza VIP tickets.

Colorado: Landeskoging lessons from Gabriel Landeskog himself, free Coors beer and royalties for every time someone says “Tap the Rockies”.

Dallas: The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and Kari Lehtonen.

Edmonton: All the Timbits he could ever want, even in flavors that might not be around anymore, handmade by the Kid Line (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle) because of course they’d be part of the deal too.

Florida: Lifetime VIP access to every club and bar in South Beach (hanging with Lebron James optional) and the chance to gaze upon Jose Theodore‘s beauty.

Los Angeles: The keys to the kingdom–knowledge of who runs the @LAKings Twitter account. Oh, and unlimited chances to hobnob with celebrities.

Minnesota: The entire Minnesota State Fair. All of it. Forever.

Montreal: Unlimited smoked meat sandwiches from Schwartz’s Deli, unlimited poutine and rodeo lessons from Carey Price.

Nashville: An endless supply of barbecued ribs, the chance to duet with Carrie Underwood and the fossil that inspired the Predators name.

New Jersey: Zach Parise. Of course. But also Cory Booker–because you never know when you might need a SuperMayor.

New York Islanders: Nassau Coliseum cupcakes, a sick awesome sleeve tattoo from the team’s official tattoo artist and…wait…Aidan Grabner? Is he serious?!?!

New York Rangers: An exclusive concert that Henrik Lundqvist performs in, plus the rest of the team, basically.

Ottawa: Unlimited Beaver Tails and private access to skate on the Rideau Canal every winter.

Philadelphia: An hour-long lecture delivered by Ilya Bryzgalov about the universe, unlimited cheesesteaks and a guest appearance on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Phoenix: The secret to Shane Doan‘s longevity, ability to control the coyote howling sound and Mike Smith.

Pittsburgh: A lifetime supply of Primanti’s sandwiches and a sleepover at Mario Lemieux‘s house.

San Jose: The recipe to In-N-Out Burger’s spread as well as everything on their secret menu.

St. Louis: A puppy hand-rescued by David Backes and unlimited tickets to the Gateway Arch.

Tampa Bay: Steven Stamkos and permission to operate the Tesla coils in Tampa Bay Times Forum whenever he pleases (admit it, that would be pretty cool).

Toronto: James Reimer and permission to have sleepovers at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Vancouver: Roberto Luongo.

Washington: Rides around DC on Mike Green‘s scooter – with Green as the driver.

Winnipeg: A lifetime supply of moose meat and the jet plane that inspired the Jets name–the actual one–along with a crew of RCAF pilots.

Just as Emma had news of the Bruins signing a baby goalie, the Blackhawks announced that they officially re-signed Jamal Mayers and Johnny Oduya along with signing some prospects.

Jammer was brought to the team last summer to shore up the lagging offense and provide protection to the big scorers, and he did so with 11 fighting majors and 91 penalty minutes. He was kinda silent but effective on the fourth line, but his presence there will be even more of an asset if he’s reunited with the likes of Jimmy Hayes and Andrew Shaw next season.

“Another year in Chicago! Yeah!”

Johnny came to the team at the trade deadline in February, and he gave the defense a much-needed shot in the arm, spending on the power play and exceeding the expectations of everyone. Yes, he had a slump during the playoffs, but so did everyone. We need him on the power play, and he’ll serve the defense well if he’s paired with guys like Steve Montador or Nick Leddy.

Not to mention that he has a good home now away from That Place.

Also signed today to three-year contracts were four very talented younglings: forward Joakim Nordstrom and defenseman Klas Dahlbeck of the Swedish Elite League and goalies Mac Carruth of the Portland Winterhawks and Kent Simpson of the Everett Silvertips. The Swedes both represented Sweden in the World Juniors, with Nordstrom helping the Swedish team win gold this year’s championship. Simpson had a .909 save percentage and two shutouts with the Silvertips, while Carruth led the Winterhawks to their second WHL Championship in a row and had a career-high 42 wins in 63 appearances.

In a conference call to talk about the major signings, Stan Bowman said that the organization was eager to sign both of them, and that signing Oduya was necessary – they’d have to search for a defenseman of his calibur if they hadn’t. He also made it clear that this wasn’t the end in terms of building the team with trades or signings, so we’ll just have to keep our eyes and ears open. After all, there’s only one month till Free Agency Day.

- Krista