GM: Roger Bowmoore
Coach: Paul Maurice
Last season: 14th overall. Did not make playoffs
Ins and Outs
(Season 17 to Season 18)
In: Kevin Lankinen (free agent), Matt Roy (free agent), Troy Terry (free agent), Bernd Wolf (free agent), Alexander Volkov (free agent), Mike Iulianello (free agent),
Out: Andrew Hammond (free agent), Danton Heinen (free agent), Jakub Krejcik (free agent), Mark Kastelic (free agent), Frederik Gauthier (free agent), Nikolay Goldobin (free agent),
Potential Lineup
Tomas Hertl/Dominik Lakatos/Mikko Rantanen
Olegs Sislannikovs/Nardo Nagtzaam/Alexander Volkov
Sam Steel/Cody Eakin/Dylan Guenther
William Von Barnekow/Mike Iulianello/Troy Terry
Robert Hagg/Ryan Lindgren
Matt Roy/Logan Stanley
Simon Nemec/Marek Hrbas
Kevin Lankinen/Sam Montembeault
A Question
What’s the key question regarding London’s upcoming season? We can identify a few. Here are some key questions for this season if you are a London Monarchs fan: 1) Can these inexperienced goalies win? Thirty-year-old Finn Kevin Lankinen has 30 games on his resume across two seasons with London about 5 years ago, and Sam Montembeault played in 18 last season. For those of you challenged by math, that works out to … let’s see … carry the 8 … no don’t carry the 8 … 48 games. Lankinen was 7-22-1 in those games with a 3.94 goals against average and 87.1 save percentage. Montembeault was 6-11-1 with a 4.26 GAA and poor save percentage of 85.6. Simply put, they are both going to have to perform better. 2) How is the defense corps? Directly in front of those goalies, for more than a third of every game, will be two really good defensemen in Ryan Lindgren and Robert Hagg. Both are known as excellent defensive blueliners and 200-plus hit guys, but look what they did last season points-wise: Lindgren scored 20 goals and 45 points and Hagg scored 16 goals and 51 points. Whoever is London’s defenseman coach deserves a bonus tea. 3) Who will the offensive stars be? This might sound like old news, but London fans will see these names most often in the headlines of the papers: Dominik Lakatos, Mikko Rantanen, Nardo Nagtzaam and 7-time all-star Tomas Hertl. The latter will have to train right to avoid injuries because his hard-charging style has affected his durability, but if he stays healthy, he could hit the 30-goal plateau for the 7th time. Last season, Hertl scored 33 times while dishing out 99 hits. The other three aforementioned forwards all had more than 100 hits. When you can get your fancy-pants skill players to also bash opponents and separate them from the puck, you’ve got something. Whoever is London’s forward coach also deserves a bonus tea. 4) Will any Monarch player emerge from obscurity to be a star? We don’t have a crystal ball, but Rose seems to. Take it away, Rose.
Rose’s Focus
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the hottest octogenarian of them all? Me? Oh, you’re so kind. And observant. Now I will switch from the magic mirror to the crystal ball to see what’s going to happen in rainy London this winter. I see a hockey player. A smallish hockey player. Something is wrong with his tongue. No wait. He’s just speaking Latvian. Every time he says a word, an ‘s’ gets attached to it. That’s odd. So is Olegs Sislannikovs, who London obtained in a trade for goalie Martin Jones two seasons ago. The Latvian skates all over the place, loves physical contact and shooting the puck. He’s not a good passer and thinks defense is for goalies, but he could produce some impressive numbers this upcoming season. It looks like Coach Paul Maurice (back for a second stint in London) is going to give Sislannikovs a real shot this season by starting him on the second line. So I’m looking at the numbers he produced at 13 minutes per game, extrapolating, and envisioning 60 points, 23 goals and more than 80 hits to go along with some pretty high takeaway and giveaway numbers. He’ll do even better if he has to take Tomas Hertl’s place on the top line for some games due to injuries. I don’t remember my crystal ball ever being wrong in the past, so you should feel safe in investing in his number 16 Monarchs jersey as a gift for your kids. Do that, and your kids will suddenly be the cool kids in school. Although all their classmates will think the last name on the back is misspelled.”
