Friday, October 24, 2008

Friday Farm Report: Hrabal Ready to Go

I just got off the phone with Springfield Falcons Head Coach Jeff Truitt and learned that injured import blueliner Josef Hrabal will make his North American debut tonight when the AHL club takes on the Albany River Rats.

Hrabal has not played a game since the opening period of the Oilers/Flames tilt in Camrose suring the rookie tournament. Initial reports suggested he could be out much longer but the shoulder responded to treatments and he is good to go.

"We're going to get him into the line up and see what he's got," Truitt told me, "He's been practicing hard and our trainer has said that he's as close as he's ever going to be and he certainly wants to play so it's time for him to get his feet wet."

Cody Wild will be the one getting the short straw making way for Hrabal.

Rob Schremp, Stephane Goulet and Ryan Potulny will play together again tonight after a successful game against Hartford last week. Hanz Benson, Ryan O'Marra and Colin McDonald will be another trio. Liam Reddox, Tyler Spurgeon and leading scorer Slava Trukhno have played very well. Gullaume Lefebrve, captain Tim Sestito and Carl Corazzini appear to be entrenched as the shutdown line with the way they have performed thus far.

Theo Peckham will also play tonight after his one-day recall to the NHL.

More on the farm later.

3 comments:

Bob Arctor said...

Hi Guy,

I noticed Andrew Perugini hasn't been able to report to Stockton yet due to immigration issues. Is this pretty common for Canadian players going down to the states for the first time? Is there an average amount of time this normally takes or is pretty much case by case?

Guy Flaming said...

It seems to happen to several players every year. I have no idea why, it seems like something that should get smoother over quickly since it's an annual thing teams do.

It's not isolated to North America though either, it's happened to Slava Trukhno several times over the last few years including over Christmas where he was basically stuck in Denmark for a couple of weeks.

Seems rather confusing why it's an issue every season.

Bob Arctor said...

Thanks for the response Guy.

You'd think someone would start the immigration process up as soon as the player is assigned to the AHL or ECHL.