Re: UML 2011/2012 Season Thread
Well here is the USHR article about the new Russian defenseman. Wild story.
Here’s something rarer than hens’ teeth: today, a ’94 will enroll as a freshman at an NCAA school. Not only will he be the only ‘94 in Div. I college hockey this season (though there are a few late ‘93s), but last season he was a midget minor – and he hasn’t played since. Not in an official game, anyway.
That’s quite a jump: U16s to Hockey East.
The player’s name is Dima Sinitsyn and he’s a 6’2”, 190 lb. defenseman from Moscow, Russia. He arrived at Logan Airport from his native Moscow, Russia Friday and, after going through the enrollment process today, will begin practicing with the UMass-Lowell River Hawks immediately. When Norm Bazin and his staff at UMass-Lowell feel Sinitsyn is ready, he will be put in the lineup.
Sinitsyn’s last official game came late last March when, as a member of the Dallas Stars U16 Team, he played in Nationals. With the Stars, Sinitsyn was the team’s leading scorer – and not just from the blueline, but overall. In 36 Tier I Elite League games, he posted an 11-20-31 line with 18 pims.
Excellent with the puck, Sinitsyn is a strong skater with size, has obvious offensive skills, and also really likes to step up and hit guys. An NHL scout we spoke with who saw him in U16 play last season believes Sinitsyn, a 6/17/94 birthdate, to be a strong candidate for this June’s NHL draft.
Sinitsyn’s road to Lowell has been very unusual, to put it mildly. If you’re looking to connect the dots, look to Colorado College. Sinitsyn was taken in last spring’s USHL Draft by the Green Bay Gamblers, whose coach/GM at the time was Eric Rud, a Colorado College alum now back at alma mater for his second stint as an assistant. In the transfer between Rud and current Gamblers head coach Derek Lalonde, Sinitsyn, who had a very strong camp this summer and expected to play for the Gamblers this season, got caught in a numbers game when, due to various circumstances, Green Bay found themselves with more imports than allowed. Lalonde worked out a trade for Sinitsyn with the Sioux Falls Stampede but the deal fell through when the big defenseman was unable to get a visa. (His student visa had run out when he graduated from high school in Dallas last spring.)
Rud returned to Colorado College over the summer, taking the place of Jason Lammers. Lammers moved on to take an assistant’s position at Lowell. And, of course, Bazin is a former Colorado College assistant himself.
Lammers realized that the only way Sinitsyn was going to play hockey in the US this season was on a student visa, and he really worked that angle hard. It helped that Sinitsyn’s mother is a teacher of English and that she was determined that her son to go to college in the United States. And both she and her son stuck with the plan even though Sinitsyn had to cool his heels all fall in Russia while waiting to find out when he could get his visa and leave for North America. After a lot of back and forth with the US Consulate in Moscow, Sinitsyn got his visa last week -- and made a beeline for the next plane to Boston.
