Page 5 - Sports Energy News, Cornwall, Issue No 68

www.sportsenergynews.com Issue #68 July 2018 5

FPO

VISIT CORNWALLMAZDA.COM for details ZOOM-ZOOM
613-933-6210

3301 Brookdale avenue, cornwall
Sports Energy “Where sales are built on service”

Greater Cornwall & Areas Community Sports Newspaper

Sports Energy presents Sports Panel

Greater Cornwall & Areas Community Sports Newspaper
The 2017/18 NHL Season is officially in the record books.
Sports Energy
What are your thoughts on the season and the choices of major award winners?

Gilles Gaudet - Sports Enthusiast - It will go down as one of the best seasons in NHL history. The Capitals are the Stanley Cup
Greater Cornwall & Areas Community Sports Newspaper
champs and the Golden Knights are the runners up. Can you imagine if it would have been the Lightning versus the Jets? Gary
Bettman would have preferred talking about CTE than dealing with Tampa/Winnipeg television ratings! The award ceremonies were
predictable, with the exception of the deserving Taylor Hall winning the Hart trophy. New Jersey would like to thank Peter Chiarelli
for making this possible. His dealing a MVP for the good, but not great, Adam Larsson may eventually cause his demise. While the
Capitals took home the award that really matters, the Stanley Cup, the Las Vegas team showed what a plan and shrewd planning can
accomplish. Would George McPhee and Gerard Gallant please call the aforementioned Peter Chiarelli and Marc Bergevin and explain
to them how this is done. Explain to them how to find centres, defencemen, goalies, and put a winning culture in place. The 2017-2018
season will be remembered as a great one, with the Vegas and Ovie factors it will be a hard one to duplicate next year.

Jake Lapierre - Conditioning Coach - Reflecting on the 2017 - 2018 NHL Season, it was the season of the rookies; a new breed of up and
coming superstars are on the cusp of elevating the game of hockey to a whole new level. Throughout hockey history, the game has transformed
in 10 to 15 year increments from the Beliveau era (50’s & 60’s), the bruising 70’s, the elite Gretzky & Lemieux era (80’s & 90’s) and into the
new millennium where players were bigger, stronger, faster, conditioned, and led by players like, Lindros, Thornton, OV, and Syd. The new
young players transitioning into the NHL today are even faster, stronger, and talented because of the players they idolized as kids not so long
ago. The speed, the dangles, the plays; rookies were fun to watch this year. The game is transitioning and it’s great to be a fan!

Jim Riddell - Seaway Karate Club - The 2017-18 season may have been a disappointing one for several Canadian teams, but the Leafs
and Jets have now become a force in the league. The Las Vegas Golden Knights became the most successful expansion team in history; first
winning the Pacific division, and then the western conference before finally losing in five games to Washington in the Stanley Cup Finals.
Great to see Alexander Ovechkin lead the Caps to their first cup since joining the league in 1974-75. At the awards ceremony with Taylor Hall
as MVP, Connor McDavid as best player, Matthew Barzel as top rookie, Victor Hedman as best defenceman, and several Las Vegas Knights
as winners, it looks like the voters got things right. All in all – a very successful NHL season.