AHL All Star Teams Announced

The rosters had to be adjusted with the loss of so many players to the NHL with the lockout ending last week.

Players such as Jordan Eberle, Justin Schultz both of Oklahoma City, Adam Larsson (Albany), Cam Atkinson (Springfield) and Oliver Ekmann-Larsson (Portland) couldn’t participate.

However, they do have a good number of young future NHL’ers in the lineup with a good European representation.

The Eastern conference All Stars include a pair of Swedish goaltenders in Robin Lehner (Binghamton) currently 3rd best GAA 1.90 and tops in save percentage at .945 and outstanding rookie Niklas Svedberg (Providence) with a solid 2.46 GAA.

On the backline, the group is led by Swede Tim Erixon (Springfield) the last cut from Columbus’s short camp and 8th best scoring defenseman with 21 points, Swede Erik Gustafson (Adirondack), Czech Tomas Kundratek (Hershey) currently 3rd best goal scoring defenseman with 12 goals, 6th overall in defenseman scoring and  2ND shooting/scoring percentage at 17.4%. Swede David Rundblad (Portland) rounds out the European defenseman on the Eastern conference squad.

Up front Swiss Nino Niederreiter (Bridgeport) with a league third best in goals scoring at 19 and swift skating Slovak Richard Panik (Syracuse).

For the Western conference All Stars Czech goalie Petr Mrazek (Grand Rapids) having a stellar rookie campaign after last years big WJC effort for the Czechs and is joined by fellow teammate Swede Gustav Nyquist who is the 4th overall scoring scorer in the AHL.

Olympic Qualify Squads Announced

The final four countries to compete to land a spot at Sochi (Russia) Games in 2014 announced their rosters for the tourney to be held in Riga,Latvia February 7-10 and a strong AHL flavor in the tourney particularly the Latvians.

The host country squad has nine players with significant pro time in the AHL and one currently plays in the AHL and the other is in the NHL.

The Redlihs brother Jekab (Syracuse) and Krisjanis (Albany) are joined with younger brother Mikelis. The other with AHL time are Arvid Rekis (Worcester IceCats), Janis Sprukts (Rochester), Raitis Ivanans  (Abbotsford, Hamilton, Hershey, Milwaukee), Juris Stals (Hartford), Martins Karsums (Norfolk, Providence), Arturs Kulda (St. John’s IceCaps, Chicago Wolves).

Kaspars Daugavins (Binghamton) will be skating for Ottawa Senators on Saturday and rookie Zengus Girgenson is currently with the Rochester Americans.

The Kazakh’s will have in net Vitali Yeremeyev (Hartford), Maxim Spiridonov (Springfield and  Hamilton) and a surprise Canadian born defenseman Kevin Dallman (Manchester and Providence) who received Kazakhstan citizenship making him eligible to play for the team.

The French have goaltender Cristobal Huet (Manchester and Hamilton) manning the nets and the British have announced a preliminary roster and will have a final one submitted in a week to 10 days.

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