WHL Sanction Portland Winterhawks

[Nodak]

Originally Posted by nsh03

Excellent article, thanks for posting it. The sanctions and article confirm what was already apparent to anyone who keeps an eye on WHL suspensions: The Winterhawks have a bullseye on their back and are going to get screwed on every possible occasion by the league. And then you consider the penalties to Johnston, which look an awful lot to me like the league trying to place a scarlet letter on him... it's downright vindictive.

As I see it the team was being generous to the families of its financially needy players with its own money. Yes it violated some rules and should be punished accordingly for it (namely paying for training and the cell phone), but hammering them for the flights is ridiculous when you look at how that rule is worded. This strikes me as the equivalent of the police raiding a suspected drug house and only finding a building code violation, but condemning the house and charging the owners with drug crimes anyway because that's what they thought/hoped they'd find.

I see it differently. I liken it more to Al Capone. The feds knew he was doing lots of bad things, but only had concrete evidence of the seemingly minor crime of tax evasion. The league had flights, cell phones, and week long training programs. Seemingly minor to most people, but I personally have never seen a WHL team suck soooo bad, get a new front office and then become a consistent producer of 1st round NHL picks. Not to mention the luring of kids that had said they were going to the NCAA. That sort of thing just doesn't happen in junior hockey, except in Portland.

Maybe the Winterhawks scouting staff are awesome and Johnston is one helluva salesman. Maybe Portland is just that great of a town. Maybe their owner dished out some personal cash to some of these blue-chippers, something that would not show up on an audit of the 'Hawks.

The whole league was happy to see Portland turn it around, but their ability to be so good in a watered down 22 team league for 3+ years is a bit uncanny.

[chilly666]

Originally Posted by cougar fists

Apologies to Portland fans but how can this be defended? This is the ULTIMATE penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct and is well deserved IMO. I am very proud of the WHL on this one and I hope Portland struggles for a long time. Just because you have the largest fan base doesn't give you the right to use your dollars to win games. That's not what this league is about! Not all teams can do this and it's a low blow. Ah well, at least their spending got them two lost championships and a huge sanction. LMAO.

what is really wrong with bringing players' families with their own money? it's not like the families were on the ice helping the team and provided no advantage to the players or team.

[cougar fists]

Originally Posted by chilly666

what is really wrong with bringing players' families with their own money? it's not like the families were on the ice helping the team and provided no advantage to the players or team.

Yo Chilly, hope alls well man... my rebuttle to this lies within my first post, checker out

[nsh03]

Originally Posted by Nodak

I see it differently. I liken it more to Al Capone. The feds knew he was doing lots of bad things, but only had concrete evidence of the seemingly minor crime of tax evasion. The league had flights, cell phones, and week long training programs. Seemingly minor to most people, but I personally have never seen a WHL team suck soooo bad, get a new front office and then become a consistent producer of 1st round NHL picks. Not to mention the luring of kids that had said they were going to the NCAA. That sort of thing just doesn't happen in junior hockey, except in Portland.

Maybe the Winterhawks scouting staff are awesome and Johnston is one helluva salesman. Maybe Portland is just that great of a town. Maybe their owner dished out some personal cash to some of these blue-chippers, something that would not show up on an audit of the 'Hawks.

The whole league was happy to see Portland turn it around, but their ability to be so good in a watered down 22 team league for 3+ years is a bit uncanny.

Well one part of sucking so badly for a few years was getting a lot of high draft picks. As the article posted by MH points out, it was actually Ken Hodge from the previous administration that drafted Ross and Johanson, and I believe you can add Ponich to that list as well. If you go back, you'll see Hodge drafted Coburn, Dubinsky, Brendan Morrow, Andrew Ference, the Hossa brothers, Richard Zednik, and so on. Yes the Winterhawks have had a cluster of high NHL picks recently, but historically we have produced a lot of them and of the recent ones, they were pretty evenly split between being drafted by Hodge and Johnston. Aside from getting college players to come play for us, I don't even see how benefits would apply considering that players are drafted, not recruited like college sports.

Building success in the WHL quickly is not a new thing. Look at what Everett was able to do as an expansion team with Kevin Constantine. I despised Everett's style of play, but Constantine brought NHL credibility and instantly built a contender out of nothing. Johnston has gone about it differently, but done the same thing. And that ties in to the players coming from college: If you're an 18 year old and you see what Johnston has done developing Johanson, Neiderreiter, Baertschi, Rattie, etc. and have a realistic chance to play for the Memorial Cup, would you really need money to entice you? When we sucked under the previous ownership, I remember seeing us trade the rights to college players who said they would only play in the WHL in Calgary for example, and we didn't cry foul over that because it made logical sense from the player's perspective.

Finally, remember that this is a franchise with a large fan base and a long history of success. The mid to late 2000's were an anomaly for Portland. Johnston had a lot to work with off the ice when he got to Portland, and Hodge's draft picks gave Johnston some young talent to rebuild around. I would equate it to a college football coach taking over at Tennessee. Sure they've sucked for a few years because they've been mismanaged, but they're a sleeping giant. A coach at Tennessee starts off in a much better position to succeed than a coach at say Washington State (sorry Mike Leach) because of the fan base, the history, the facilities, and so on. Same story in Portland.

[w1nman]

You're right, there is a draft and all that, but everyone knows that certain players will not play in certain towns. Because of that, teams won't draft a player they know they have no chance of signing cuz he'll just go to college. For example, Eric Comrie, he was the top player available in his draft, but 13 teams passed on him because he made it pretty clear that he's not coming up north from Cali to play for no small, freezing, nothing to do town in Canada. Only the 5 US teams and perhaps the 3 NHL towns had a shot at him. Tri with their Vezina winning owner took a shot at him and only landed him because they also drafted his best bud brian williams and brought him up north with a lot of playing time guarantees, promised Eric a certain number of games in net as a 16 yo behind rimmer, and promised him the starting job at 17. All that is a lot, and while inside the rules, you can see how it can be easy to stretch it out. If the dub allows that to go much further, then you may as well only have 8 teams in the league. That is why Portland got hammered.

Also, another thing that looks a little fishy, that people have mentioned, is the college guys and euros that they've picked up. Euros taken in the import draft have no obligation to come over here. this line from the punishment listed:

" A player contract signed in 2009, involving flights for the player’s family and a summer training program"

screams, to me, Sven Baertschi. I don't buy this robin hood mantra that portland is putting out there, nor do i buy reports that all flights were only given to players after they signed. All that is coming out of portland, not the league, and Portland has been proven guilty of lying thru this whole process as the league did say they lied multiple times when they could have come clean in the last 6-8 months. Both Sven and the kid they got this year bjorkstrand, before the import draft, had no intention of coming to north america. They take a magical family trip to Portland (how did they get there!?) and the kid signs. I dunno, just sayin'.

The mike johnston 'vendetta' thing portland fans are perpetrating is tiresome, as just a small amount of research shows that johnston and robison have been great friends for ages, making this even harder on the commish. He is even quoted as saying such.

The real message this sends, to me, is the US teams need to be super careful. This still is a canadian sport and a canadian league, and the US teams already have an unfair advantage in their attractiveness to US born players. Taking that advantage further and breaking rules leave no choice but to have the book thrown at you.

[nsh03]

Originally Posted by w1nman

You're right, there is a draft and all that, but everyone knows that certain players will not play in certain towns. Because of that, teams won't draft a player they know they have no chance of signing cuz he'll just go to college. For example, Eric Comrie, he was the top player available in his draft, but 13 teams passed on him because he made it pretty clear that he's not coming up north from Cali to play for no small, freezing, nothing to do town in Canada. Only the 5 US teams and perhaps the 3 NHL towns had a shot at him. Tri with their Vezina winning owner took a shot at him and only landed him because they also drafted his best bud brian williams and brought him up north with a lot of playing time guarantees, promised Eric a certain number of games in net as a 16 yo behind rimmer, and promised him the starting job at 17. All that is a lot, and while inside the rules, you can see how it can be easy to stretch it out. If the dub allows that to go much further, then you may as well only have 8 teams in the league. That is why Portland got hammered.

Also, another thing that looks a little fishy, that people have mentioned, is the college guys and euros that they've picked up. Euros taken in the import draft have no obligation to come over here. this line from the punishment listed:

" A player contract signed in 2009, involving flights for the player’s family and a summer training program"

screams, to me, Sven Baertschi. I don't buy this robin hood mantra that portland is putting out there, nor do i buy reports that all flights were only given to players after they signed. All that is coming out of portland, not the league, and Portland has been proven guilty of lying thru this whole process as the league did say they lied multiple times when they could have come clean in the last 6-8 months. Both Sven and the kid they got this year bjorkstrand, before the import draft, had no intention of coming to north america. They take a magical family trip to Portland (how did they get there!?) and the kid signs. I dunno, just sayin'.

The mike johnston 'vendetta' thing portland fans are perpetrating is tiresome, as just a small amount of research shows that johnston and robison have been great friends for ages, making this even harder on the commish. He is even quoted as saying such.

The real message this sends, to me, is the US teams need to be super careful. This still is a canadian sport and a canadian league, and the US teams already have an unfair advantage in their attractiveness to US born players. Taking that advantage further and breaking rules leave no choice but to have the book thrown at you.

You're ignoring the fact that Rattie, Ponich, Johansen, Ross, Morrow, Carruth, Peters, Rutkowski, Wotherspoon, Boychuck, Gabriel, and so on (in other words, just about every key non-Euro from our last two playoff runs) were drafted by Ken Hodge before Johnston ever got to Portland. Johnston was the one who developed them, but they were in the pipeline when he took over. Yes, under Johnston we have successfully convinced a handful of NCAA-bound players to come to Portland; but at the same time, as the article mh34444 posted points out, we've also rolled the dice and lost with other NCAA-bound players we've drafted and failed to convince to change their minds. Johnston has gambled on those players quite a bit, hoping that the draw of Portland as a city and a fanbase combined with the team's recent on-ice success and Johnston's coaching pedigree will entice kids with NHL dreams to come to Portland. Do you really think that kids like Turgeon and Jones whose fathers were professional athletes really chose to come to Portland because they received improper benefits? I think it's far more likely that they chose to come to Portland because they and their families looked at what Johnston has done and said, "I want to play for that guy."

Regarding Bartschi, unless you believe we signed Bartschi to a contract a year before we actually drafted him, I don't see how he is a plausible fit for a player signed to a contract in 2009. And I'm pretty sure if we were signing players to contracts before they were even drafted, that would have been mentioned in the sanctions.

I never claimed (and I haven't heard any other Winterhawks claim it either) that the WHL or Robison has a vendetta with Mike Johnston. I think the vendetta is with the Winterhawks franchise as a whole, and many of us had felt this was the case even before these sanctions. You yourself suggest that there is an anti-US team bias in the league due to a perceived unfair advantage in getting US-born players to play there. Interestingly, the only US-born players to have an impact on our playoff runs were Mac Carruth (a Hodge draftee) and William Wrenn, so that argument doesn't carry much weight in this case. And going briefly down a rabbit trail, I would also argue that places like Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton have an advantage over US teams in getting Canadian players to play for them.

As much as it sucks for those trying to argue that Johnston must have cheated to build the team, the fact remains that aside from Neiderreiter, Bartschi and Wrenn, the key players from the last two teams were all either Canadian-born, Ken Hodge draftees, or (in most cases) both. Supplying the team captain with a cell phone is a minor thing which I do believe the Winterhawks should be punished for, paying for off-season workouts is a bigger issue which I believe the Winterhawks should be punished for (the loss of a 1st round pick or two would seem fair), but punishment for the flights for parents and/or for assumed infractions for which no evidence was found is ridiculous. Read the league rule on the flights (which made up the vast majority of the infractions), it could be argued that the Winterhawks operated within the letter of the law with the way it's worded.

[chilly666]

The Western Hockey League's Board of Governers is holding meetings in Las Vegas this week, and the Winterhawks are expected to appeal the sanctions they were handed earlier this season.

It's unclear whether Portland's sanctions, which were levied in November for improper player benefits, are on the agenda for the meetings. However, it seems the Winterhawks are determined to force the issue. Owner Bill Gallacher, president Doug Piper and general manager/head coach Mike Johnston were planning to attend the meetings, which began Monday and conclude today, to try to state their case.

"We're going to this meeting," Piper told the Portland Tribune. "We've been talking with the league office. We feel like we're in a good place with the league on this.

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