The Sherbrooke Phoenix rolled into Le Colise looking for a win. Former Sabre sniper, Donald Audtette's son, Daniel, and his Sherbrooke mates were blanked 6-0 by Grigorenko and the Remparts. To add more heat to the game, Friday night was Patrick Roy's 500th game as head coach of the Quebec Remparts.
Grigo saw to it that his coach would be taking home the game puck for his Hall Of fame mantle piece.
Grigo scored his second hat trick of the season. Goals #21, #22, and #23 were beauties.
Grigo now has 23 goals and 20 assists in 23 games. He's +14 if you need him.
The QMJHL will likely be mandating that Grigo play future games with one arm tied behind his back to make it fair for his competition.
Its a bitch that the kid can't show off his disgustingly entertaining skills in the NHL. Stupid lockout!
Grigo now leads The Q is goals scored. He has one more goal that Val D'Or forward Anthony Mantha.
Grigo is the second leading scorer in The Q with 43 points, one shy of P.E.I Rocket, Ben Duffy (24 games).
This has been a hectic week for Roy, Grigorenko and the Remparts.
Earlier this week, Roy traded Russian rocket Nikita Kucherov to the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies. In return the Remparts obtained the services of forward Denis Kamaev and a 2nd round choice (acquired from Chicoutimi) in the 2013 draft.
The Remparts then traded Denis Kamaev and their 1st European choice in 2014 to the Sherbrooke Phoenix. In return, they obtained Sherbrooke’s first European choice in 2014 as well as a 5th round choice in the 2013 draft.
In six games in a Remparts uniform this season, Kucherov scored three goals and had seven assists for 10 points.
“Decertification”, as defined by North American business law is as follows:
Decertification of a union means that union loses the power to collectively bargain on behalf of its members. Such a move has some potential benefits (i.e.: the NFL Players Association decertified in an attempt to avoid a lockout - and a number of risks attached).
The biggest benefit is legal. Interactions between unions and management are governed by labor law. For example, many of the collectively-bargained elements of the NBA/NBPA relationship - the salary cap and NBA draft for example - are perfectly legal under that set of rules.
The relationship between the league and players in the absence of a union would be governed under anti-trust law. And that gives the players a wide range of options, including an anti-trust lawsuit.
You’ll recall that last year, both the NFL and NBA players associations served and volleyed the decertification ball back and forth at their owners in an attempt to end their protracted work stoppages.
In the NHL, where the players have been locked out by their owners since midnight on September 15, more and more players are using the “D-word” . On Wednesday, the NHLPA presented what it felt was a real, legitimate solution to the lockout. All 750 NHLPA members crafted a proposal that would in effect hand back to the owners $1 billion in salaries over the term of the five year agreement. Gary Bettman and the owners chewed on the proposal for 50 odd minutes, then, they paused, took a deep breath and flatly rejected the solution. Murmurs and whispers of decertification began percolating from all 30 NHL cities. On Thanksgiving Day, Sabres goalie Ryan Miller fired off an email to James Mirtle of The Globe and Mail to inform the hockey world that he is sick and tired of all the rhetoric and shenanigans that the NHL owners have been foisting upon the NHL fans, players, and sponsors.
Said Miller:
“After watching the other sport leagues go through labour disputes last year, it is apparent that until decertification is filed, there will not be any real movement or negotiation,” Miller wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. “Many things in our negotiation are very consistent with the NFL and NBA negotiations, and both of those leagues filed papers necessary to decertify.
“It seems like the players in any league are going to be subjected to the same scripted labour dispute developed by [NHL and NBA law firm] Proskauer Rose in all collective bargaining discussions now and in the future. Decertification becomes part of the script because Gary Bettman and the owners are trying to get a sense of how far they can push us and at some point we have to say ‘enough.’
“They want to see if we will take a bad deal because we get desperate or if we have the strength to push back. Decertification is a push back and should show we want a negotiation and a fair deal on at least some of our terms.”
Were you to ask all 750 NHL players on Tuesday if they believed in decertifying their NHLPA union, you may have gotten a tepid 40-40% approval rating. Were you to ask the same question to the same players on Thursday morning, it’s likely that the percentage in favor of decertifying the union would have increase to 60-70%. Look folks, the players are not going to bow and genuflect to the owners. Fehr is not intimidated by Bettman. The players appear to be as solid as thick, dense ice right now. They are locked arm in arm, and they have had enough of fighting the good fight. Ever cognizant of having their union busted by the owners, the NHL players have dug their collective skate edges into the ice and they are now prepared to fight harder, and more passionately than ever before.
Miller is mad as Hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. What he did Thursday is scream into a megaphone that he, like many of his NHLPA brothers, have had it up-to-here with Bettman’s act. The players presented a plan that would close the gap to $182 million over the lifetime of the newly proposed five year CBA. To date, this latest proposal is the most meaningful and magnanimous offer on the players behalf. The owners keep saying that they have presented their “best deal” and that the onus falls squarely on the players to make close the gap that exists between the two sides. On Wednesday, the players answered the bell. The owners, though they rejected the offer, now have to recognize that Fehr and the players are willing to dig deeper in order to make a deal that will hopefully see games resume by mid-December. The two sides are supposed to speak again on Black Friday.
I’ve covered Ryan Miller for the past eight seasons. I always walk away from my conversations with him with a high regard for his integrity and his passion for the game of hockey. Miller is a great team mate. He loves his boys. He’s the defacto captain of the Sabres, and has been since he matriculated from the Rochester Americans to the Buffalo Sabres after the last lockout ended. Love him or not, you have to prop Miller for always calling a spade a spade.
“I am tired of the disregard and the ego,” Miller said. “Our fans and sponsors are alienated, and this is hurting the game. This process has more of the appearance of brand suicide than a negotiation.”
Read the rest of Mirtle’s outstanding story here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/exasperated-ryan-miller-heartily-endorses-decertification-of-union/article5578329/
The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has announced its 17th Hall Of Fame Class. There are some huge names on the list, including one former Sabres D-man, who presently serves as a coach on Lindy Ruff's coaching staff.
Brilliant performance under historic pressure as well as long-lasting excellence is recognized as the IIHF Hall of Fame inducts players:
Teppo Numminen
Peter Forsberg
Danielle Goyette
Paul Henderson
Mats Sundin
Builder Jan-Åke Edvinsson will also be inducted.
TSN's Gord Miller will be presented with the Paul Loicq Award while the Soviet national team of 1954 won the Milestone Trophy.
The IIHF Hall of Fame ceremony will take place on May 19, 2013 on the Gold Medal Day of the 77th IIHF World Championship in Stockholm.
Sabres fans will forever remember Teppo for his leasdersip and exploits in helping to guide the young and daring Sabres to two Eastern Conference Finals after the 2004-05 NHL lockout.
Here's Teppo's truly inspiring accomplishments. Talk about celestial bodies of work!
Teppo Numminen (FINLAND)
Born: Tampere, Finland, July 3, 1968
A member of the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame, few players have had the dual careers enjoyed by Teppo Numminen both in the NHL and for his country internationally.
He played in four Olympics (winning three medals), four IIHF World Championships, and another four Canada Cup/World Cup events. Indeed, if it was a top-level international event for Suomi during his two decades of play, Numminen was there. As well, his career included some 20 seasons in North America, and by the time he retired, in 2009, he had played 1,372 regular-season games in the NHL, more than any other European player.
With the previous induction of his father, Kalevi, as a Builder in 2011, the Numminens become the first father-son pair of inductees in IIHF Hall of Fame history.
Numminen was drafted 29th overall by the Winnipeg Jets in 1986, but he continued to play in Finland for two more years. He was part of the U20 team in ’88 that won a bronze for Finland. He was named the tournament’s Best Defenceman by the IIHF Directorate, and just a few weeks later he played for Finland at the Olympics in Calgary.
That team won an historic silver medal, the first time the nation had reached the podium in Olympic ice hockey. Teammates included a virtual who’s who of the greatest Finnish players of the era – Raimo Helminen, Reijo Ruotsalainen, Kari Eloranta, and Jarmo Myllys to name but a few.
Numminen moved to Winnipeg to begin his professional career in North America at the start of the following season, 1988-89. Tall and strong, he used strong positional play more than brute force to play successful defence. He was reliable and consistent, rarely missed games due to injury, and was a pillar on the blue line for the nest 15 seasons, first with the Jets and then the Phoenix Coyotes when the team moved to Arizona.
Meanwhile, Numminen was equally a pillar on his national team’s blue line. In both 1987 and 1991 he played at the World Championships and then the Canada Cup, and in 1996 he played in the World Championship and then the inaugural World Cup of Hockey.
Numminen was a lynchpin on the blue line even as he entered his thirties. He played at the first three Olympics with NHL player participation, in 1998, 2002, and 2006, winning a bronze in Nagano after Finland upset Canada in that medal game. In 2006, the 37-year-old played in the most important game of his life, the gold medal game of the Olympics against rivals Sweden. The Finns fell one goal short and settled for an impressive but heart-breaking silver.
This was the second close call for Numminen. He had also played against Canada in the championship game of the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, but that turned out to be another one-goal loss. In both instances, though, the Finns had defeated all comers to get to those critical final games.
Teppo Numminen is arguably one of the greatest international defencemen of the modern era.
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