Reader poll: historic Euros
Published 10:25 am Monday, September 5, 2011
In honor of Labor Day, I got to thinking about which Everett players labored the most during this weekend’s Everett Silvertips Preseason Tournament. One name that immediately came to mind was Vladimir Dolnik. The Slovakian winger worked his tail off whenever he was on the ice, throwing his body around and battling furiously for loose pucks. Tips general manager Doug Soetaert had previously described Dolnik to me as a Euro whose game is more North American than European. After Dolnik’s pseudo fight during Saturday’s game against Spokane, Soetaert glanced over to me in the press area with a sly grin on his face and said, “He has a more North American game than most North Americans.”
So it looks as though the Tips may have found a keeper in Dolnik, who was the 21st-overall pick in this year’s CHL import draft. But that’s par for the course for Everett, which has generally done pretty well in the import draft. Not only have the Tips been able to get every single European player selected over the course of nine drafts to report, many of those have been solid contributors.
It’s too early to say what kind of impact Dolnik or new German defenseman Dominik Bittner will ultimately have on the team. But it’s not too early to consider how much impact past Euros have had for Everett. So who do you think has been Everett’s best European player? I’ll do a post with my ranking of the top five Everett Euros later in the week after the poll has closed.
To date, who is the best European player in Silvertips history?
