At one point this 2017-18 hockey season, there were over 90 players on the Newfoundlanders Away list, The Telegram’s regular chronicle of how players from this province are doing in high-level leagues elsewhere.
Today, we’re down to a half-dozen players from the list who are still competing.
Three — Adam Holwell, Jordan Maher and Evan Fitzpatrick— are with the Acadie-Bathurst Titan, who are in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League final.
The others are in the American Hockey League.
Centre Clark Bishop is with the AHL Charlotte Checkers, who are facing the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in a second-round Calder Cup playoff series that begins tonight. And rookie forward Nathan Noel is on the roster of the Rockford IceHogs who are taking on the Manitoba Moose in a series that also gets underway today.
And then there is Colin Greening of the Toronto Marlies, the St. John’s native who is high on the Newfoundlanders Away seniority list, having made his first appearance in the feature in 2006 when he started his first season at Cornell University.
The Marlies entered the playoffs as a Calder Cup favourite, having topped the 30-team AHL with a 54-18-4 record, and although he wasn’t among team’s top scorers, the 32-year-old Greening has been given a lot of credit for his part in that achievement.
It wasn’t enough to get him recalled to the parent Toronto Maple Leafs; he last played in the NHL more than two years ago when he appeared in 30 games with the Leafs after coming over from the Ottawa Senators as part of the trade that sent Dion Phaneuf to the Sens.
At the time, Greening was viewed as less of a player and more of a contract. He was halfway through a deal that was paying him nearly $9 million over three years, and Toronto taking on the remainder of that financial commitment was seen as part of the price for having Ottawa take Phaneuf.
However, Greening turned out to be something considerably more for Toronto. He was a useful fill-in for the Maple Leafs for those 30 games in 2016 and even though he and the $3.2 million on the last year of his deal were buried in the AHL for the entire 2016-17 season, his play, his attitude and his leadership impressed general manager Lou Lamoriello.
It impressed Lamoriello so much that on July 1 of last year, the first day of free agency, the Leafs re-signed Greening to a one-year, $750,000 contract.
That represents a big drop from $3.2 million, but it was a one-way contract, meaning Greening would get the full amount even if he played with the Marlies.
And although there was talk at the time — by both player and team — about him competing for a job with the big club, it was pretty much understood Greening was destined for the Marlies.
In other words, the Maple Leafs wanted him to be part of their AHL program and were willing to play him three-quarters of a million dollars — a huge amount for what amounted to a minor-league contract — to do so.
When asked about the signing, Lamoriello began by calling Greening “a consummate pro.”
“The way he handled it in the minors (in 2016-17) and the job he did with the minor-league players was just phenomenal,” said Lamoriello last July. “We also feel that he can still play. I think he feels motivated to come back and try to win a job.
“If not, he’s satisfied on mentoring the players and being ready if called upon. That is important when you have a player like that who accepts who he is and where he’s at and what he can contribute.”
Greening contributed 16 goals and 13 assists in 73 regular-season games for the Marlies, and added five points (2G, 3A) as the team got by the Utica Comets in a first-round series that went the full five games.
It won’t get much easier in the second round, where the Marlies will face the Syracuse Crunch, who had the third-best record in the league (the series began Thursday night). However, Toronto has since been bolstered, with defenceman Travis Dermott and forward Andreas Johnsson reassigned after the parent Leafs fell to the Boston Bruins in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Meanwhile, Bishop had two goals in three games as the Checkers swept their first-round series. It’s part of what’s been a strong second pro season for the 22-year-old from St. John’s, who had seven goals, 28 points and a plus-13 rating in 68 games for Charlotte.
Noel hasn’t skated for Rockford in the playoffs after being promoted from the ECHL’s Indy Fuel. The 20-year-old from St. John’s split the regular season between the IceHogs and Fuel, with five goals and seven assists overall in 38 games as he dealt with injuries for a large part of the campaign.
Twitter: @telybrendan
