ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 10, 1997 hockey TAG: 9701100079
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
The Roanoke Express has taken this happy holidays stuff seriously. Since Thanksgiving weekend, they've lost only once.
Emerging from an off-season that was unsettled at best off the ice, the Express skated into an early November six-game trip as a young team trying to find maturity and the exit ramps off Interstate 10.
Maybe riding all of those miles south together brought a glue to coach Frank Anzalone's fourth Roanoke team. Then the franchise found a familiar face, but a different player.
The result is that as the Express finishes the first half of its ECHL season tonight at Hampton Roads, it is headed for its best season - if it stays on track.
Roanoke is the league's hottest team, with nine victories in the past 10 games. It was 5-8-1 when it got off the bus after the tour of I-10 stops. Since then, it is 15-3-2.
The improvement also came with the return of Ilya Dubkov, the prodigal center who has brought more than Russian dressing to the Express. He has 40 points in 20 games, not to mention a different attitude.
His work ethic, a waning subject during his Roanoke past, has been relocated. Anzalone thought hard about whether he wanted to deal with Dubkov again. The coach got the player he wanted, a player who saw his career perhaps melting.
``He was a more desperate player this time,'' Anzalone said. ``He was more hungry. We were the ones in position to say yes or say no.''
Because last year's Express was fractured in the locker room, it was fractious on the ice, too. Anzalone recruited mostly a new roster, then did what he does best.
He asked for leaders to display their talent, but play within the system. He gave Dave Gagnon, as a goalie the last resort on the ice, a place of prominence when the mask was off, too.
Veterans Jeff Jablonski and Michael Smith have been front-runners in a positive fashion. Then, Dave Stewart returned from an ankle injury. His play was an inspiration during fellow defenseman Smith's three-week call-up to the AHL.
Anzalone, the club's player personnel man, too, also located the best affiliations the Express has enjoyed. The ties with Calgary of the NHL and Manitoba of the IHL have brought not only promising players, but also enthusiasm and hunger.
The 20-11-3 record is the franchise's best through 34 games. The 20 victories is one more than the best Express club had at that point two years ago. No goalie in the league has more than Gagnon's 18 victories.
The arrival of Dubkov also changed the club's usually defensive profile. In the first 14 games, the Express averaged 3.43 goals per game while allowing 4.29. In the 20 since Dubkov's return, Roanoke is scoring 4.65 goals per outing and allowing only 3.35.
``We have a number of guys who feel this is their passion, their careers,'' Anzalone said. ``If this group does have a thought in mind, as individuals, it's that they are going to make it.
``They all think they're good, and that can be good and bad for the coach, but it's an audience that listens. The leadership has been strong. We have quality people. We're on the same page.''
The problem is, they're also in the same East Division as South Carolina, Richmond and Hampton Roads, which returns tonight's game with a Roanoke Civic Center visit Saturday to start the second half of the season.
In the 23-team ECHL, only six teams have more points than the Express, which is only in fourth place in the East Division, the league's best.
If the 16-team playoffs began today, instead of Roanoke being one of the higher seeds, its first-round foe would be the Renegades or Admirals - and those teams would have home-ice advantage in a best-of-five series.
Fifteen of the Express' final 36 games are with the three divisional foes ahead of it in the standings, including three this weekend on a cross-commonwealth adventure that ends Sunday in Richmond.
Then, this team already has been on a tougher journey than that, and it didn't just survive. It obviously prospered.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB