Tailing The Komets

League officials originally hoped to hold the expansion draft on Friday, but it will likely be held next week. The hold-up is another potential expansion franchise, though no one will comment officially or answer specific questions about the state of a possible Quad City team.

“We will reconvene our annual meeting in the next 48 hours and finish up the annual meeting and have announcements to make at that point and time for firm dates on the scheduling meeting and some other announcements,” Komets President Michael Franke said. “Any of the expansion stuff right now I can’t speak to.”

The league does have a couple of plans in place for the expansion draft. If it’s for one team, the other five teams can protect 15 players and one goaltender; if it’s for two teams, they can protect 13 and one. Only the players who were on a team’s final roster at the end of the season are eligible for selection, and teams must protect any returning players they already have under contract.

The dispersal draft of Kalamazoo players will likely be held the same day.

Komets General Manager David Franke said he met with Guy Dupuis and Colin Chaulk today to discuss new contracts and will meet with Nick Boucher, Rick Varone and P.C. Drouin later this week. The Komets have already made an offer to Leo Thomas, and Franke is setting up appointments with Kevin Bertram and Justin Hodgman.

The coliseum will be hosting the girls state basketball touranment on March 6 so it’s likely the Komets will be on the road that weekend. At the very least, they’ll have to play road games on Friday and Saturday. You can read about it here. This is a good deal for Fort Wayne, and especially girls basketball which is outstanding in this area and always has been.

Justin Hodgman is going to the Chicago Blackhawks’ prospect camp July 5-10. He’s currently working out with trainer Paul Zinchenko and skating a couple nights a week to get ready.

“I don’t want to go in with any expectations,” he said. “I want to go in and work hard, and as a free agent you have to earn everything you get. Last year I made a good first impression in Minnesota, and I’m going to try to do the same thing in Chicago.”

Rick Varone, who is also staying in town so far this summer, said he is talking to teams in Europe but has not made a decision yet. If that doesn’t work out, he’d be happy to come back to the Komets.

Here’s what I’ve got so far. This is NOT everyone. Feel free to suggest some additions. If you can figure out who is the toughest at No. 4 with Purinton, Madigan or Parsons, then God bless you.

00 Kevin Weekes

0 Icy Eagle

1 Chuck Adamson/Steve Janaszak

2 Guy Dupuis/John Hilworth/Kevin Schmidt/Dan Ronan/Randy Legge/Tim Dunlop/Al Sims

3 Duane Rupp/Arthur Kiyaga/Jeff MacMillan/Danko Mironovic/Trevor Doyle/Sean Gagnon/Len Wharton/Ron Burman/Terry Thomson/Craig Channell

4 Con Madigan/Cal Purinton/Grant Richison/Brian McKee/Mike Dombkiewicz/Steve Parsons/Shorty Melanchuk

5 Terry Pembroke*/Nellie Bulloch/Martin Burgers/Vic Demarco

6 Lionel Repka*/Jim Burton/Jim Pearson/Bob McNeice/Peter Crawford

7 Roger Maisonneuve/Dale Baldwin/Bob Fitchner/Bobby Stewart/Rick Varone/Paul Willett/Bill Orban/Lloyd Maxfield/Dave Lemay/Dan Bonar

8 Teddy Wright/Doug Rigler/Ian Boyce/Bart Stevens/Andrew McBain/Doug Reid/Bill Richardson

9 Barry Scully/John Goodwin/Ron Ullyot/Brandon Warner/Shawn Evans/Hartley McLeod/Len Ronson/Bob Lakso

10 Bobby Rivard/Matt Reynolds/Martin Gascon/David-Alexandre Beauregard/Marc Boileau/D’Arcy Keating/George Kotsopoulos/Igor Malykhin/George Drysdale/Bob Fowler

11 Len Thornson*

12 Reggie Primeau*/Ron Leef/Carey Lucyk/Jeff Ablett/Jack Timmons/Art Stone/Ron Handy

13 Andy Bezeau/Sean Venedam/Brian Keates

14 Norm Waslawski/Al Dumba/Jake Pence/Sergei Stas/Mike Clarke/Dave Smith/Joe Kastelic/John Ferguson

15 Merv Dubchak/Wally Schreiber/Edgar Blondin/Brad MacMillan/Dave Norris/Danny Lambert/Byron Lomow

16 Eddie Long*

17 Jean-Marc Richard/Mitch Woods/Chad Cabana/Frederic Bouchard/Jeff Worlton/Chick Balon/Eric Sutcliffe/Darrin Smith/Orrin Gould

18 Robbie Laird*/John Anderson/Ryan Severson/John LeBlanc/Mitch Messier/Bob Miller/Rob Motz/Chris McRae/Peter Hankinson/Darren Martens

19 Terry McDougall/Jonathan Goodwin/Bruce Boudreau/Michel Massie/Bernie MacNeil/Dean Sheremata/Ron Zanussi/Kevin MacDonald

20 Pokey Reddick/Kevin Hansen/Carlin Nordstrom/Wayne Bishop/Tom McVie

21 Steve Salvucci/Lee Davidson/David Hukalo/Kelly Perrault/Jim Logan/Pokey Reddick/Terry Ewasiuk/Rod Willard

22 Kevin McCloskey/Kevin Bertram/Bruce Richardson/Rick Judson/Chris Tok/

23 Tony Camazolla/David Carpentier/Dustin Virag/Andrei Bashkirov/Bobby Jay/Mike Natyshak

24 Scott Gruhl/Konstantin Shafranov/Rob Guinn/Jake Ortmeyer/Brian Straub

25 Viacheslav Butsayev/Terry Marchant/Marc Barlow/Doug Wickenheiser

26 Colin Chin*

27 Bruce Racine/Kelly Hurd/Matt Syroczynski/Josh Tataryn/Rob Murphy

28 Robin Bawa/J.C. Ruid/Kevin Kotyluk

29 Vladimir Tsyplakov/Luciano Aquino/Bruce Ramsay/Derek Gauthier/Dan Currie/Igor Chibirev

30 Robbie Irons*

31 Kevin St. Pierre/Dan Sanscartier

32 Max Middendorf/Chris Armstrong/Dion Darling/Jeff Rohlicek

33 Derek Ray/Lonnie Loach/Eric Boguniecki/Nick Boucher/Steffon Walby/Kelly Miller

34 Scott LaGrand

35 Doug Teskey/Bob Essensa/Kevin Reiter

36 Shawn Penn

37 Marc Dupuis

38

39 Danny Stewart

40 Bob Chase*

41 Ray LeBlanc/A.J. Bozoian

42 Konstantin Shafranov

43 Brent Henley

44 Kevin Kaminski/Troy Neumeier/Daniel Goneau/Andre Roy/Shawn Cronin/John Purves

45 Tom Lawson/Sean Gauthier

46

47 Keli Corpse/Adam Lewis/Chris Grenville

48

49 Brent Gretzky

50 Craig Martin

51 David Nemirovsky

52

53

54

55 Dan Ratusny/Pascal Morency/Ryan Jorde/Milt Mastad/Scott Shaunessy

56

57

58 Ken Ullyot*

59 Colin Lister*

60 Sebastien Laplante

61 Christian Bragnalo

62

63

64

65

66

67

68 Tero Lehtera

69

70

71 P.C. Drouin/Mario Larocque

72 Marc Laniel

73

74 Maxime Gravelle

75

76 Lance Galbraith

77 Steve Fletcher*

78

79

80

81

82 Tom Nemeth/Olivier Legault

83

84

85

86

87 Liam Garvey

88 Justin Hodgman

89 Evgeny Saidachev

90

91 Colin Chaulk

92 Igor Chibirev/Oleg Mikoulchik

93 Mike McKay

94 Mathieu Curadeau

95

96

97

98

99

I wrote a story today about two local guys who are putting together a list of the greatest athletes to wear each number in sports. You can read the story here. If you’d like to vote, you’re going to have to pick up the paper.

So why don’t we try this survey with the Komets? Some of it will be easy because I know Theresa will flood the blog with No. 91 votes, but also, I don’t think anyone else has ever worn No. 91 for the Komets. But who wins No. 12: Carey Lucyk, Ron Leef, Reggie Primeau or someone else? This isn’t necessarily about who played the most games or scored the most goals, but who you think should represent the number.

I’ve got a partial list of numbers different Komets wore at work, and I’ll try to post it on Monday, but start amongst yourselves and we’ll see how far this goes. Or if it goes at all. LOL. Since we’re always accused of being old on this blog, this might be right up our alley.

You might be able to get a head start by looking at our 50th anniversary Komets team.

Just got off the phone with Komets General Manager David Franke who has to start building his protected list for next week’s IHL expansion draft for Dayton.  Each team can protect 13 skaters and one goaltender, and as Franke understood the rules, pull a player back into protection once they have lost a player. The most a team can lose is three players.

Franke said the Komets or other IHL members will not release which players they choose to protect.

“You can’t protect everybody, but you try to protect the people you think who will come back,” Franke said. “There are probably a few guys on there with their sights set on Europe. It will be difficult. We had a championship team the last two years and a lot of these guys were part of both years.”

Franke also said he has Komets coach Al Sims working on ranking Kalamazoo players for a dispersal draft which will be held after the expansion draft.

The IHL is expanding its roster to include up to eight veterans, but Franke said it’s doubtful the Komets will be able to carry that many and stay under the league’s salary cap.

“Knowing who are veterans are, it’s gong to be tough to get eight of them in the lineup every night,” he said. “I expect our team to again have a lot of rookies on it to offset the higher salaries of our veteran players. We’re going to probably have at least six rookies in the lineup every night.”

According to Franke, he said veterans Colin Chaulk, Guy Dupuis, Konstantin Shafranov, P.C. Drouin, Kevin Bertram and David Hukalo have all told him they’d like to return next season. Shafranov has told Franke he’d like to retire after next season and playing in the World Championships for Kazakhstan. Franke said he believes goaltender Sebastien Laplante is leaning toward retirement, and Rod Aldoff is undecided on his future.

Hukalo will have shoulder surgery on June 25, and Brad MacMillan may require more work on his injured hand. Franke said he’s doubtful Justin Hodgman or Mathieu Curadeau will return next season. The Komets have talked to Keith Rodger and Sean O’Connor about signing for next season.