Kukla's Korner Hockey

Category: Hockey-Related-Stories

Expert On Russian Policies And The Russian Athlete

by Paul on 03/07/22 at 01:16 PM ET
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from Rick Westhead of TSN,

Sergey Radchenko is an expert on Russian foreign and security policies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. A professor and historian, he has written on politics and international sports.

Radchenko was born in the former Soviet Union near the Chinese border and grew up on the island of Sakhalin in the northern Pacific.

In an email exchange with TSN, he offered his perspective on how Vladimir Putin has stepped up repression inside Russia’s borders and about Ukraine's recent request that Canada stop granting new visas and work permits to Russian athletes.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

TSN: How deeply do you think the Russian government would care about NHL players and other pro athletes being barred from working in North America? And what risks might Russian athletes in North America be taking by being openly critical of Putin?

Radchenko: “I have very strong doubts that Putin would care about NHL players being kicked out of Canada to be frank. This would not be on their list of concerns. As for your other question, I think it is becoming more difficult to speak out. There are new threats being made by the Prosecutor General’s office in relation to the criticism of the war in Ukraine that basically make it treason to speak the truth.”

continued 

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Video- Supporting Ukraine

by Paul on 03/01/22 at 11:41 PM ET
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Take four minutes of you time to reflect on the people of Ukraine.

via TSN's YouTube page,

Hoosli, a Ukrainian male chorus, performed the national anthem prior to puck drop between the Jets and Canadiens in Winnipeg. The long-running community choir provided the performance as a show of support for the community during this difficult time.

 

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Morning Line- Dominik Hasek

by Paul on 02/26/22 at 11:18 AM ET
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Skating Through Nature

by Paul on 01/14/22 at 09:02 AM ET
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from Ken Warren of the Ottawa Sun,

Stepping down from the Zamboni, yet another flood complete, former Ottawa Senators winger Chris Neil looks out at the tree-lined ice dream that has been carved out of the wilderness just outside Stittsville.

“We’ve talked about it, with two partners (Jarrett Gibbons and Steve Beck), for about four years,” said Neil, who has exchanged his Senators equipment for heavy-duty outdoor gear in advance of Friday’s official opening of the Icelynd Skating Trails. “We started getting ready at the end of September and there were no roads in here. We did a lot in a short period of time.”

Neil bought 90 acres of land off Fernbank Road years ago, while still playing with the Senators, and tossed around different ideas on how to eventually develop it.

Somehow, it only makes sense that the resulting project would revolve around ice.

Family and friends have chipped in with time, machinery and electrical know-how.

The venture open to the public includes a well-lit, two-kilometre skating loop through the pines, cedars and poplars, with bonfires and benches set up for breaks along the way. Another three-kilometre stretch should be open within the next couple of weeks.

continued

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A Tragic Accident

by Paul on 01/08/22 at 02:48 PM ET
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from CBS NewYork,

A young hockey player in Connecticut has died after a collision between two players on the ice during a school game.

Outside of St. Luke’s School in New Canaan, the mood was somber Friday as students and parents gathered to mourn the loss of 10th grader Teddy Balkind.

“It’s horrible. It’s really bad,” said an 18-year-old student named Calvin. “I feel like it’s just like an outreach of, I don’t know, sympathy.”

As CBS2’s Kiran Dhillon reports, police say Teddy died after a Thursday evening junior varsity hockey game between high school students from St. Luke’s and Brunswick School.

As the two private school teams faced off at Brunswick’s rink in Greenwich, it’s believed Teddy fell to the ice. Another player who was near him was unable to stop, and the two collided.

According to a statement sent to students from Brunswick, Teddy’s neck was accidentally cut by a skate.

continued

I did tweet this a day or two ago too....

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On The Road To Recovery

by Paul on 01/08/22 at 12:57 PM ET
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from Dan Fumano of the Calgary Herald,

Before Brady Leavold’s life took a nightmarish turn, he had the same dream as a lot of Canadian kids. Now he has a new dream.

Leavold grew up in Port Coquitlam wanting to be a hockey player and made it to the mid-level pro leagues.

But his career was derailed by escalating drug use as he attempted to numb secret pain. Within a few years, the once-promising right winger went from skating alongside future NHL all-stars to sleeping in tents and alleys in the Downtown Eastside, robbing people to support his worsening dependence on a deadly drug that had just hit the streets.

He was injecting fentanyl a dozen times a day, no longer wanting to live. Now, at age 34, he figures the only thing that stopped him from dying was jail.

continued

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Tracking Hockey Players At All Levels

by Paul on 10/21/21 at 10:00 AM ET
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from Matt Larkin of The Hockey News,

How many of us retired hockey players romanticize the idea that we could’ve made it in the pros with a bit more luck? If only that hardnosed bantam coach hadn’t overlooked us, ignored us because we were too small or because the coach wanted to play their own kid. If only we could’ve been seen for all the little things we did well on the ice.

What if, in the near future, nothing players did at the minor or senior hockey levels went unnoticed? What if coaches could track, in real time, how fast players were skating, how long they held the puck, how effective their zone entries were…in the middle of a game, right after their shifts? That idea doesn’t represent some far-off future in a world with flying cars. It’s the present. The advent of player tracking is already in the process of making instant analysis a reality at the NHL level, but it’s also about to start happening at much lower levels thanks to breakthroughs made by a company called Drive Hockey Analytics. Forget the classic trope of parents driving their kids home after games, doling out advice on how they needed to hustle more or finish their checks. Thanks to readily available information on a Drive Hockey app minutes after a game, Mom and Dad might be pointing how their kid’s peak skating speed dipped from last week or how their average shift length increased.

So how did Drive Hockey Analytics, a Vancouver-based company incorporated in 2018, make a foray into player-tracking technology?

continued

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Video- Erin Andrews On Her Start In Broadcasting

by Paul on 10/20/21 at 10:53 PM ET
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via Sportsnet's YouTube page,

Before Erin Andrews became the sports broadcasting stalwart she is today, she cut her teeth as a rinkside reporter with the Tampa Bay Lighting. Christine Simpson sits down with Erin Andrews to discuss her big break during her time with the Bolts.

 

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Using Artificial Intelligence To Analyze Hockey Games

by Paul on 10/04/21 at 08:33 AM ET
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via a press release from the University of Waterloo,

Researchers have made a key advancement in the development of technology to automatically analyze video of hockey games using artificial intelligence.

Engineers at the University of Waterloo combined two existing deep-learning AI techniques to identify players by their sweater numbers with 90-per-cent accuracy.

“That is significant because the only major cue you have to identify a particular player in a hockey video is jersey number,” said Kanav Vats, a PhD student in systems design engineering who led the project. “Players on a team otherwise appear very similar because of their helmets and uniforms.”

Continue Reading »

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Wayne Gretzky Will Be The Recipient Of The 2021 Stan Musial Lifetime Achievement Award

by Paul on 09/15/21 at 07:27 AM ET
Comments (1)

from NHL.com,

Wayne Gretzky and his wife Janet will receive the 2021 Stan Musial Lifetime Achievement Award on Nov. 20.

The Musial Awards celebrate athletes who demonstrate sportsmanship and exemplify class and character, and the Lifetime Achievement Award honors those who had those qualities for which Baseball Hall of Famer Stan Musial was known. The ceremony will take place in St. Louis, where Musial played all 22 of his MLB seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals and where Gretzky played 18 games for the St. Louis Blues in the 1995-96 NHL season.

"Knowing how beloved Stan was and the way he carried himself on and off the field, it is tremendously humbling to receive an award named for him," Wayne Gretzky said.

continued

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