After a ten hour trip, I joined our two of our TJHN scouts in Blaine. Along for the ride…….The new Head Coach of the NA3HL’s MicKinney Warriors.
An announcement of the Head Coach and his arrival in McKinney is expected from the team shortly, but be assured he is in Blaine and working on the roster.
As usual, the annual NAHL event in Blaine makes an immediate impact upon arrival. Scouts? There were more NCAA Division One and Three scouts present on Thursday than I recall from previous years. The USHL was out en-mass and the NHL was well represented.
Touching base with several Head Coaches and scouts upon arrival yesterday, all had a similar opinion. The hockey was fantastic, and there is not many events that could come close to rivaling this event.
While keeping up with the continuous flow of games taking place on eight ice surfaces is no easy task, scouts were definitely making their rounds. Watch ten minutes of one game, and watch ten more of the game going on in the next arena. Try to identify players in short increments of time while trying to make your “key list” to watch later on in the event.
The addition of the High Performance Hockey League Midget teams was a masterful stroke on behalf of the HPHL and Mark Frankenfeld. Bringing in national powerhouse teams like the Chicago Young Americans, Honeybaked and others, has definitely added a new dimension to the event that scouts were talking about.
Unfortunatley I cant give you an individual game recap because I am headed back to the rink for a solid twelve hours of hockey. We encourage all of you to watch the games on Fast Hockey through the TJHN video link.
Joseph Kolodziej – Publisher
