Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Dwight Helminen to Finland?

I stumbled across a reference to one of our old players when I was looking for some info about Carl Hagelin. Eliteprospects has a rumor section of their site, and a familiar name was on there: Dwight Helminen, rumored to be going over to Finland to play. The article that they linked to was in Finnish (understandably), so I contacted a translator at freelang.net to explain to me exactly what this means:

Voisikohan kolmas mies olla Dwight Helminen? IS Veikkaajan mukaan pari suomalaisseuraa on kiinnostunut pelaajasta, joka nimensä takia on jäänyt suomalaisten penkkiurheilijoiden mieleen pelatessaan USA:n paidassa 20-vuotiaiden MM-kisoissa. Velipoika Lars Helminen teki juuri sopimuksen Jyväskylään.

Dwight Helmistä, 24, kuvataan sellaiseksi kahden suunnan sentteriksi, jota Lukko hakee: nopea, taitava, puolustaa hyvin, pelaa joukkueelle. Viime kaudella hän teki AHL:ssä vähän enemmän pisteitä (39) kuin Peters ja Doell (kumpikin 33).

Basically it translates as follows....a team in Finland has signed a couple guys this offseason and are looking for another:

Could the third guy be Dwight Helminen? According to IS Veikkaaja (a
newspaper) a few Finnish teams are interested in the player, who is
remembered by Finnish players because of his surname, while playing in
the world championships for 20-year-old under the American flag. His
brother Lars Helminen has just made an agreement with the Jyväskylä
team.

Dwight Helminen has been pictured as a center of two dimensions, which
Lukko is looking for: fast, capable, defends well, plays for the team.
During the last term he did more points in AHL (39) than Peters and
Doell (each 33).

Thanks to Cemre Güngör for the translation!

Dewey has had a couple of pretty good years in the AHL--two years ago being better than last year--but if he's reached a point where it doesn't look like the NHL is going to be an option, playing in Finland might be a good backup plan. I don't know a ton about those European leagues, but I imagine the money isn't too shabby.

Anyway, best of luck to him. I still wish he had been able to hang around for a fourth season with Michigan. He was a fun player to watch, and we really could've used him. Or we could've used him to decide he was leaving a week sooner so we could've gotten Bryan Lerg, but that's another story.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Indeed he has ...

http://www.forecaster.ca/hockeynews/hockey/_0qum61w90yfl/movements.cgi