In a brilliant marketing manoeuver, the head coach of the team will be perrenial prairie fan-favourite Rocky Thompson, former enforcer of the Calgary Flames, and for a brief period, the Florida Panthers of the NHL. Right out of the gates, Thompson aimed his guns at IHL Commissioner Conor McCreery. "Yeah, Idiot-sticks [McCreery] wouldn't even let me into the draft, and Mike wanted me aboard from the start. Looks like he wants a fight, and let me tell ya, NOBODY fights better than the Rock!" and he raised his right eyebrow. Szala later added that he would continue his fight with McCreery to have his coach instated as a player as well. "This isn't over! The courts will be involved, and there can be no legal reason for a person to be excluded from the draft, particularly if he has played at the professional level before!" Joining Thompson on the bench will be former pugilist Nick Fotiu and known havoc-wreaker Billy Smith, who also doubles as the goalie coach. The General Manager of the team is Dave Semenko, who follows his friend Wayne Gretzky into the management side of the hockey business. The Whalers bought the rights to the logos and other property of the former Hartford Whalers, and Szala promised that they would be wearing the old-school green jerseys and would use the Whalers' emblems of the past in creating a new logo to be introduced at a later date. The Whalers will fight in the LunaSee Records Coliseum, with a capacity of over half of Moose Jaw's population, seating 18,923. LunaSee is an independent record company and somehow outbid powerhouse corporations for the naming rights, so much so that the Saskatchewan taxpayers did not finance the building of the Coliseum in any form. Their farm team will be based in Szala's hometown of Craven, in their old curling rink right beside his boyhood home. The Craven Aggies will be a real "farm" team, he says. "So much of the Craven economy is based on agriculture, and the men who come through our system will have strength and endurance training the old-fashioned way." When asked about rivalries, Szala and Thompson were frank. Said Szala, "Well, part of it will definitely depend on what conference and division we are placed in, but there can be no doubt that we will have a heated rivalry with the Regina Wheaties, what being 45 minutes away and all. Regina always gets the press and the government money, but did they every have Al Capone? As well, the Ottawa Orcas are a prime target for us, with them being whales and us whalers." At this point the entire coaching staff and management team started singing what we were told will be one of their fight songs, a song from the Fox tv show Futurama that went: We're Whalers on the moon
Their other fight song will be the old Hartford Whaler's fight song, the Brass Bonanza. For an audio clip of this song, log onto www.brassbonanza.com and follow the links. Semenko then pointed out that the Moose Factory Possums will be a rival in his eyes. "They got two things going against it. One, it's got "Moose" in the name, and there's only room in this league for one Moose, and that's us! Second, in all my time in hockey, I've never hated anyone more than someone who plays dead in a fight." Thompson then piped up, "And so's that McCreery [expletive deleted]!" Suffice it to say, the IHL landscape has changed a great deal with the introduction of the Whalers. A little bit flatter, but a lot more lively. |