Hockey name dropping

Tonight at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell the New Jersey Devils beat the Portland Pirates in overtime.  It was a decent game.  Not a great one, but it was okay.  Other than the fact Lowell won with 42 seconds left in overtime, nothing really special happened.

Nothing, that is unless you were sitting in the back of section G, and unless my sister and I are not guilty of mistaking some one’s identity.

There was a guy sitting in row 18 who was clearly scouting the game.  We see that from time to time, although usually the scouts prefer to sit on the corner and not directly behind the net.  My sister noted that this particular scout looked really familiar.  I took a look over and thought I agreed.  “He almost looks like Robbie Ftorek,” my sister said. 

What do you think?  Is that guy former Boston Bruins and New Jersey Devils head coach Robbie Ftorek?

Take another look… 

We all know how crappy the camera on my phone is.  If I had the groovy camera I’d have a shot that actually looks like the person in the image, but if I had the groovy camera I wouldn’t have had the balls to just snap off a few of the cat sitting in front of me.

We’ve had some hockey greats in the Tsongas in the past.  Bruin Legend Brad Park used to work the broadcasts for the Manchester Monarchs.  If you search back in this blog I think there is a posting that mentions Bruins Super Legend Ray Bourque watching his son play against the Lock Monsters.  Even more impressive were the times when The Greatest Hockey Player in History sat in one of the boxes.  I speak of Bobby Orr himself.  The Greatest Hockey Player in History, Bobby Orr, is an agent these days and one of the players he represented played for the Lock Monsters a few years ago… I can’t for the life of me remember which player though.  It doesn’t matter, Bobby Orr graced the Senate with his presence.  The man has no knees left, and he’s got to be around 60 years old now, but I am 100% positive he could still lace them up and make the best players in the NHL look silly. 

Anyway, the only question that was left to us was who was Robbie Ftorek working for?  He was the head coach of the last New Jersey Devils AHL farm team in Albany, but he was fired from that job at the end of last year.  I seem to remember hearing that he was a scout for the Devils now, but I can’t say that with any certainty. 

What I can say is, when Lowell winger Barry Tallackson picked off a pass just inside the offensive blue line and skated in all alone on Portland goalie Dov Grumet-Morris and blew a shot past him into the net for the game winner, the guy who may or may not have been Robbie Ftorek jumped up in celebration with all the rest of us.  So the guy I’d like to believe is Robbie Ftorek was probably working for the Devils.  Either that or, after being fired from more than one coaching position in the organization, he’s still a Devils fan.

Then again if he wasn’t Robbie Ftorek, I just wrote a big long blog entry that is completely pointless.