OHL Alumni Central

Joe Rand, number 18 in blue, for the University of Toronto Blues.

Joe Rand played two seasons with the Toronto St. Michael’s Majors of the Ontario Hockey League, 2003-04 and 2004-05. Rand played ten playoff games for the Majors in his first season in the OHL as the team that was tops in the Eastern Conference during the regular season bowed out to the Mississauga IceDogs in the Eastern Conference finals.

Rand moved on to the Canadian university system after graduating from the Ontario Hockey League. Joe played five seasons with the University of Toronto Blues from 2005-06 to 2009-10. For some of those years with Toronto, he was teammates with Simon Barg, another OHL graduate that was featured yesterday at OHL Alumni Central. Barg is also playing in Germany.

With the Blues, Rand was for the most part a point per game player. In 2008-09 and 2009-10 he was selected as the team’s Best All-Around Forward.

In his first season of professional hockey, Rand is playing this season in Germany’s Oberliga (tier 3) with Fire Deggendorf. The team sits sixth in the ten team South Division. Joe is pushing to get up to that point per game average and sits tied for 48th on the league’s point scoring list. He is fourth on Deggendorf in points.

Check out Joe Rand’s profile page on the Fire Deggendorf official website. 

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…And Twitter as well!

The Czech Republic’s version of an elite hockey league is at the higher end of the European leagues. Numerous former NHLers can be found in the league as well as the odd Ontario Hockey League grad. The league and its 14 teams are well represented on the Internet but only in Czech and not in English. The best website to get started from is the Czech Hockey main site found here.

The following guide will not make you proficient in the language by any means! But, it will help you navigate around a Czech hockey website.

As usual, if you find any mistakes below or any key words that you believe should be added, please don’t hesitate to add that info to the comments on this post.

For other Hockey Language Guides, see the following:

Russian Hockey Language Guide

German Hockey Language Guide

Ron Newhook’s Ontario Hockey League career spanned three seasons from 1994-95 to 1996-97. He played two full seasons with the Sudbury Wolves. In 1996-97, Newhook played two games with the Wolves before being traded to the London Knights.

Ron has been playing in Germany since the 2001-02 season, mostly in the Oberliga but had two seasons in the Bundesliga 2. The DEL is tier 1 hockey in Germany, the Bundesliga 2 is tier 2 and the Oberliga is tier 3. Currently, Newhook is with Starbulls Rosenheim and is in his second season there.

Twice in his career, Ron has topped the 100 point plateau. The first time was with the Central Texas Stampede in 1999-00 when he scored 35 goals and added 76 assists for 111 points – tops on the team. The second time was last season with Starbulls Rosenheim when he potted 41 goals and added 65 assists for 106 points – second on the team in scoring.

Rosenheim is a city of 60,000 located about 50 kilometers from Munich on the border with Austria. The team currently sits 5th in the 11 team division. Newhook is second in scoring on the team again this season.

There are two on-line profiles for Ron: The team’s official site profile and the league’s official site profile.

Other related posts at OHL Alumni Central:

German hockey language guide.

OHL alumni on Bad Nauheim of the German Oberliga.

London Knights alumni still active in professional hockey.

EC Bad Nauheim Roten Teufel. Or… Bad Nauheim Red Devils. Either way, this is a team in Germany’s Oberliga or EishockeySpielBetriebs Gesellschaft. Bad Nauheim is located about 50 km to the Northeast of Frankfurt. The team plays out of the Colonel-Knight-Stadion that has a capacity of 4500 for hockey games. The league consists of 25 teams that each play a schedule of 42 regular season games.

Currently, two Ontario Hockey League alumni play for the Roten Teufel. Kyle Piwowarczyk was a London Knightfor the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons and Chris Eade’s OHL career spanned from 1998-99 to 2002-03, split between the North Bay Centennials and the Erie Otters. Coincidentally, both played 4 seasons of CIS university hockey with the University of Western Ontario Mustangs between the OHL and the careers in Germany.

Piwowarczyk, along with having one of the hardest names to spell and pronounce in the league, is currently leading the team in total points. Generally relegated to checking lines while playing in North America, Kyle has become a scorer in Germany. It should also be noted that Kyle is a two-sport man. He is an all-star baseball player with the London Majors of the Inter-County Baseball League.

Kyle’s profile page at the team’s official website can be found here.

Chris Eade is a big defenceman, born in Oshawa, Ontario. His OHL career began with the North Bay Centennials in 1998-99, where he played until midway through the 2001-02 season before being traded to the Erie Otters. He played the full 2002-03 season with the Otters. As mentioned, he spent 4 seasons in CIS hockey. He played one season in the ECHL before moving to Germany, where he is now in his second season.

Chris’s profile page at the team’s official website can be found here.