Gorillas II

Posted By: Phillip Petrakos on Monday Aug 18, 2008

Young Swede Sebastian Jonsson appears to be on the verge of joining the Amarillo Gorillas as a goaltender. The 6\'0\", 178 pound, twenty-one-year old played in the 20-and-Under Swedish Superelite league the last four years and also spent some time as the backup goaltender with the Rogle BK of the Swedish second tier pro league.

Apparently he will be pressing fellow twenty-one-year old goaltender Simon Nielsen for a job with the G-Men. Nielsen, a solid 6\'2\", 189 pound backstop has played well with Rodovre and Team Denmark for several years. It looks like a battle or European tenders for the Amarillo job.

Posted By: Phillip Petrakos on Monday Jun 30, 2008

As of the end of June, the Gorillas have not announced one player for the 2008-2009 season. There is already a known exodus of a number of key players from past rosters. The rumored migration of several other young talented players to the European leagues appear to be viable. There is even a school of thought that none, or maybe just one, of last year's players will return.

Can this mean that new Coach Coolen is scouring Eastern Canada for talented scorers to replace Nimmo, Vandermeer, and Lipsett? Or is he in the wild western provinces of the frozen north trying to find some puck-lugging defensemen like Arvai and Fornataro?

Or is Patrick Roy coming out of retirement to play in the Texas Panhandle? We can only wait and see.

A less than interesting statistic: With a 19-man roster, and given the number of days and hours left prior to the opening faceoff of the '08-'09 season, the team can announce a new signee every 5 days + 18 hours from now until the opening faceoff.

Posted By: Phillip Petrakos on Monday Jun 09, 2008

On Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 1:30 PM the new Head Coach of the Amarillo Gorillas, Tom Coolen, will hold a press conference at the Amarillo Civic Center. Some more details can be found at the following link to oursportscentral.com.

http://www.oursportscentral.com ...

Posted By: Phillip Petrakos on Wednesday Apr 23, 2008

Two familiar faces will not be back with the Gorillas organization next year. This source has learned that Shawn "Stixy" Smith and his wife Tara Gilliland-Smith will not be returning in their roles of Equipment Manager and Athletic Trainer respectively. The team has not made these moves an official announcement.

Gunner Garrett, the long time Equipment Manager of the Austin Ice Bats is reportedly going to replace Stixy. There is no word on Tara's replacement. In fact that is no word from either the Gorilla's office or the Ice Bats office on any of this information.

Posted By: Phillip Petrakos on Friday Apr 18, 2008

The official Central Hockey League website no longer lists the Austin Ice Bats as a team on the team link pull down. At the same time, the new CHL team, the Rapid City Rage are listed as a team.