5 Hockey Biographies/Scouting Sheets: Ovi,Bure,Crosby,De Haan, Kadri

Our first year here at The Hockey Writers is winding down. We started up this past January 7th and have had the good fortune of attracting some great hockey writers. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be showing off some of the best of our first 1500 posts. We’ll start with a collection of biographies/scouting sheets.

Why not start off with the game’s two most talked about players. The electrifying Ovechkin and his nemesis, Stanly Cup Champion Sidney Crosby.

Sidney Crosby: At 13 years old, Crosby tried out for and made the Dartmouth Subways, a major midget league team made up of sixteen and seventeen year olds.  However,  Hockey Nova Scotia didn’t think it would be appropriate to have such a young child on the team so he was forced to go back and play for his local bantam team in Cole Harbour.

Alexander Ovechkin: Unfortunately, years later an event would happen that would change Ovechkin forever.  His older brother Sergei, in his early 20’s at the time, was tragically killed in a car accident.  To this day Ovechkin still credits his brother for introducing him to and pushing him to continue playing hockey.  Many say his passion for the game comes from this tragic event and to this day, when he scores, Alex will often kiss his glove and point to the sky in a salute to his brother.

(source: Dan4th/Flickr)

The biggest traffic generator this past year was Chris Ralph’s 2009 NHL Entry Draft Preview/Guide. Here is a sample of the guide, featuring a couple young guns from this year’s World Junior Hockey Championship:

Calvin De Haan: One-Timer: The dynamic puck-moving d-man actually increased his production after the trade of Tavares, scoring 17 points in his final 13 games. As a OHL rookie, he finished with an impressive 63 points in 68 games.

Nazem Kadri One-Timer: A fast, creative, versatile forward, Kadri is an offensive spark-plug. He displays very good vision on the ice as well and this bodes well for his puck possession style of play. He has a high compete level and is a good forechecker.

And finally the great Russian Rocket – Pavel Bure: “Pavel was the type of player and there’s not a lot of guys that can do that but literally bring people out of their seats and incredibly explosive. He just made things happen when you didn’t think anything could happen.” –Trevor Linden

thanks to Dan4th for the Ovechkin image, more of his photography can be seen here..

Posted by Bruce Hollingdrake on Dec 29 2009. Filed under Featured Articles, Player Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.