Colin Greening is the last Newfoundlander skating.
With the Acadie-Bathust Titan and their significant Newfoundland and Labrador contingent having wrapped up their season by winning the Memorial Cup Sunday, Greening, the 32-year-old St. John’s native, is the final hockey player from this province competing in the 2017-18 campaign. He and the Toronto Marlies host the Texas Stars Saturday at Ricoh Coliseum in Game 1 of the Calder Cup final/American Hockey League championship.
The Marlies are seen as favourites in the best-of-seven series after finishing first overall in the AHL regular season and putting together a remarkable playoff run, going 11-2 through the first three rounds.
What’s more, they’re on a nine-game winning streak, including four-game sweeps of the Syracuse Crunch and Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Greening has been a big part of that, even though it might not always be obvious on the scoresheet.
Skating on what’s seen as a third line centred by Frederik Gauthier, the Marlies’ assistant captain has three goals and three assists in 13 playoff game and has fashioned a plus-five rating, solid considering his role. Greening regularly lines up against other team’s top forwards, kills penalties and is trusted enough by head coach Sheldon Keefe to have been on the ice in the last minute of Toronto’s Game 4 win over the Phantoms, when the Marlies were holding a one-goal lead.
The Marlies have never won a Calder Cup — in fact, no Toronto Maple Leafs affiliate has done it in the last 36 years — but Greening has already hoisted the AHL championship trophy as professional rookie in 2011 with the Binghamton Senators.
That makes the Cornell University product one of seven players from this province to have won the Calder Cup as a player. If the Marlies can knock off the Stars, he will become just the second Newfoundlander to be an AHL champion twice; Don Howse of Grand Falls-Windsor was part of the Nova Scotia Voyageurs’ back-to-back winners (1976 and 1977).
Other players from Newfoundland who have won Calder Cups are Brian Gibbons of St. John's (1971 Springfield Kings), Jason Morgan of Conception Bay South (2001 Saint John Flames), John Slaney of St. John's (2005 Philadelphia Phantoms), Zach O’Brien of St. John’s (2015 Manchester Monarchs) and Danny Cleary of Harbour Grace (2017 Grand Rapids Griffins).
Cleary might be seen as having been more of an unofficial coach; he was listed as a player on the Griffins roster, but didn’t skate in any regular-season or playoff games in 2016-17.
Two others from the province earned Calder Cup rings. Glen Stanford of St. John’s, the CEO of the ECHL expansion Newfoundland Growlers, was president of the 2007 AHL champion Hamilton Bulldogs and Darryl Seward, a Lewisporte native who lives in Paradise, was an assistant coach with the 2016 Calder Cup champion Lake Erie Monsters.
Notes
Saturday’s game will be the first in eight days for Toronto, but that isn’t the team’s longest break this post-season. After sweeping Syracuse, the Marlies had 11 days off before their conference final against Lehigh Valley … Centre Clark Bishop of St. John’s was winner of the Unsung Hero Award for the Charlotte Checkers, the farm team of the Carolina Hurricanes. The 22-year-old second-year pro has 28 points and a plus-13 rating in 68 regular-season games for the Checkers, who made it as far as the second round of the playoffs.
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