LAMB DIVING INTO "SPEEDY CREEK"

Congratulations to my long time friend Mark Lamb who has been hired as coach and general manager of the Swift Current Broncos of the Western Hockey League.

Stu Barnes and Mark Lamb

“Chopper” spent 7 years as an assistant to Dave Tippett in Dallas but was let go by the Stars during new G.M. Joe Nieuwendyk’s bench purge. He was reportedly close to becoming the head coach of the Stars new AHL farm team in Austin before talks frayed.

Mark is a good man.

He’s one of those individuals you want on your side when things go sideways - pound for pound he’s as tough as they come. His heart is the size of a side of beef. He knows the game. And he’s loaded with character.

What he doesn’t have is experience as a head coach – something I brought to his attention during a Grey Goose infused night in Manhattan years ago. (And almost had to put up the dukes for doing so. Vodka, it’s a funny elixir).

Well now he’s getting his chance to run a bench, and he’ll also get to “pick the groceries” (In the Tuna vernacular). He’ll do great.

Back in our days as teenagers playing in the WHL we were the commodities, not the brokers, and were actually traded for one another.

I had yet to play in the league and he was just getting started. Massive tough guy named Glenn Kulka and myself were swapped for Mark in a deal between the Medicine Hat Tigers and the Nanaimo Islanders. Without question the Tigers got the best of the deal. Chopper challenged for the league scoring title with 136 pts in 72 games while Kulka brawled his way through the “W” and had a brief stint in the WWF following a post-hockey career in the CFL. Interesting guy. I never played for the Islanders, instead remaining in Tier II until a deal to The Great Kamloops organization materialized.

Hopefully he can make a deal or two like that!

The Broncos got a very good hockey man to run their program and he’ll be closer to his home, his extended family, and his burgeoning restaurant interests in Edmonton.

I wish him, Tanya and the Lamb family all the best while at the same time I admit a tinge of sourness cause I’ll miss talking honest hockey shop with “Chopper Lamb” in Big D.