Tuesday, October 19, 2004
For what it's worth, Fort Worth gets vindication. Mike Barack tells me -- and the Hockeyblog's Toronto bureau chief confirms -- that on p. 77 of today's Sun is the following correction.
In a column published Oct. 14 (... Just ask Lonny Bohonos), Steve Simmons incorrectly reported Lonny Bohonos earned $1,500 US a week playing hockey for the Fort Worth Brahmas of the Central Hockey League. The Sun regrets the error.
Now obviously, no one is going to come out and say, "oops, you caught us" (not even the teams that actually get caught). But Barack stands by what he told Greg Rajan and insists that he and Andy Moog and Stuart Fraser do not break the rules.
"One of the things coaches who come here know is listen, we're not cheating and we're gonna play by the book," he says. "And if that means we finish in last place we finish in last place."
Which, of course, they have. Barack says that if he has a better team this year, that's down to Sims' recruiting.
But does it still raise eyebrows that someone like Bohonos, who was making $450,00 Canadian his last year in the NHL and surely continued to earn six figures while in Switzerland, would suddenly play for seven, eight, nine hundred bucks in "AA?" Of course it does. Even $1500 a week sounds low (that's $36,000 in six months; the average AHL salary is $55,000 a year). So the speculation will continue, in opposing locker rooms as well as on the Internet -- it was already going on before the the Sun said anything. But speculation it remains.
In a column published Oct. 14 (... Just ask Lonny Bohonos), Steve Simmons incorrectly reported Lonny Bohonos earned $1,500 US a week playing hockey for the Fort Worth Brahmas of the Central Hockey League. The Sun regrets the error.
Now obviously, no one is going to come out and say, "oops, you caught us" (not even the teams that actually get caught). But Barack stands by what he told Greg Rajan and insists that he and Andy Moog and Stuart Fraser do not break the rules.
"One of the things coaches who come here know is listen, we're not cheating and we're gonna play by the book," he says. "And if that means we finish in last place we finish in last place."
Which, of course, they have. Barack says that if he has a better team this year, that's down to Sims' recruiting.
But does it still raise eyebrows that someone like Bohonos, who was making $450,00 Canadian his last year in the NHL and surely continued to earn six figures while in Switzerland, would suddenly play for seven, eight, nine hundred bucks in "AA?" Of course it does. Even $1500 a week sounds low (that's $36,000 in six months; the average AHL salary is $55,000 a year). So the speculation will continue, in opposing locker rooms as well as on the Internet -- it was already going on before the the Sun said anything. But speculation it remains.
# posted by JC @ 2:47 PM 
