We’d like to formally welcome Glenn Dreyfuss, formerly of The Hockey News, to the Davy Jones’ Locker Room family! We’d like to introduce his work; Short Shifts, which goes over some bite-sized stories about the Kraken and the team!
Firebirds Captain Can Finally Focus on Fatherdom
Coachella Valley Firebirds captain Max McCormick became a first-time father earlier this month, when wife Alexis gave birth to daughter Mia. Since then, McCormick and the Seattle Kraken farm team have been tied up with the Calder Cup playoffs. That business came to a conclusion Monday night, when the Firebirds fell 5-4 to the Hershey Bears in overtime of Game 6. Hershey became back-to-back AHL champs, both years besting Coachella Valley.
“I was able to catch up on some sleep on the road,” the captain recently shared, “and my wife’s letting me have my own room right now. She’s taking care of business at home. In exchange, I have to take care of business on the ice.”
McCormick had celebrated fatherhood with a hat trick in Game 3 of the Final against Hershey. “The pucks are going up in her nursery and she can have them some day.”
Just please, please, Max, safety and sanity first; resist the impulse to make a homemade mobile out of the pucks to hang above Mia’s crib.
Four-Nation Juniors Summer Showcase is coming soonish, but nobody’s bringing any Squids!
Clip & Save: USA Hockey again this year will host the World Junior Summer Showcase, a four-nation tournament at its rink in Plymouth, Michigan.
Nine round-robin games will be played among teams from the U.S., Canada, Finland and Sweden between July 26-August 3. For two of the contests, USA players will be split into “White” and “Blue” squads.
This was labeled “clip & save” because so far, only Team USA has announced its roster. No Seattle Kraken draft picks are included, nor any Seattle Thunderbirds or Everett Silvertips among the 2024 draft-eligibles.
When Canada, Finland, and Sweden release their rosters, we’ll post here about any players with Puget Sound connections.
The Summer Showcase, according to USA Hockey, provides “an evaluation for athletes seeking to make their respective national teams for the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship, which will be held Dec. 26, 2024, through Jan. 5, 2025, in Ottawa, Ontario.”
“Badass” Grandma Inspired CPA’s Executive Chef
Climate Pledge Arena executive chef Molly DeMers seemed destined to work in a hockey arena. Her grandmother is French-Canadian, after all.
In a Seattle Refined profile, DeMers recalls of her: “I was hypnotized with her ease, not measuring anything – just feeling it. She embodied everything badass.”
Describes a lot of what makes hockey great, don’t you think?
“Life-changing” is how DeMers describes her job. “Opening this building, inaugurating the newest franchise for the NHL, the Kraken. Let alone be the first female executive chef to ever open a sports facility.”
She says the experience taught her “the gravity of inclusion, leadership, and that really anything in this world is possible.”
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