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Section_Z
01-29-2007, 02:04 PM
http://www.hockeysfuture.com/articles/9412

It was a pleasure watching him last year in the finals....
And Boyd having no slouch of a rookie year either....


Also glad to see Reese is fitting in well as a Warrior...

nivek_wahs
04-13-2007, 03:27 AM
http://www.mjtimes.sk.ca/index.cfm?sid=22371&sc=9

Last updated at 5:07 AM on 12/04/07
Brouwer's NHL debut almost snowed out

MATTHEW GOURLIE
The Moose Jaw Times Herald

Like most Canadian kids Troy Brouwer dreamed of playing the National Hockey League.
Brouwer says actually getting to the Show was “an absolute nightmare”.
The snow began to fly in Denver Dec. 20th and two days later there was more than two feet in the city and up to three feet in the area. The Denver Airport was closed for two days and re-opened in a limited capacity at noon on Dec. 22.
That was the day Brouwer got the call from Chicago Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon that he wasn’t going with Norfolk on their road trip and that he was to join the Blackhawks in Colorado instead for his NHL debut.
“I was told I had to stay at home and I was going to fly out the next morning at six,” said Brouwer. “Later that night I found out that my flight was canceled and Denver was only taking flights from major cities. I had to somehow get to Washington (D.C.) by six in the morning and it was 12 at night and Washington is a four hour drive.”
It’s not unusual to have a sleepless night before your first NHL game, but it’s not often because you’re racing down the Interstate to catch a plane.
“One of the guys had a shoulder injury and he said he would drive through the night with me so I could at least get a little bit of a sleep,” said Brouwer.
“When I got into Washington I was on time, but our flight was delayed for four hours. We didn’t know when it was supposed to go out so you couldn’t really get any rest in the airport.”
Brouwer got into Denver in time for the game-day skate, but just after the team meal and got his only real sleep of the day in a pre-game nap four hours before his first game.
A full house at the Pepsi Center and Joe Sakic in the lineup for the Avalanche made it all worth it once the puck dropped.
“It was quite an experience, it was a sold out building and I always grew up watching Joe Sakic,” said Brouwer. “Whenever you’re playing video games you trade for him because he’s such a great player. To have my first game against him and so many other players like that — it was pretty cool.”
Once the game started the nerves were fine, but the pre-game warmup was something else entirely.
“They’ve got a little thing down here where if you fall in warmup you put 50 bucks up on the board and if the team wins then you pay it to the team fine fund for going out for supper. That’s all I could think about in warm up was falling down and making an idiot of myself.”
That extended to his new teammates too, as Brouwer made sure to be very respectful — especially to Nikolai Khabibulin, one of the best goalies in the world.
“In junior you see a lot of the guys shoot high and see guys hit the glass a lot and a lot of the older guys in the pros will shoot high, but me I think I put every single one of them on the ice,” said Brouwer with a laugh. “I didn’t care how wide-open the net was on Khabibulin I didn’t want to get him pissed off. I didn’t want to rip one by his ear.”