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Friday, October 9, 1998
Predators are his 12th team in nine years as pro
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (CP) -- Blair Atcheynum hopes he's finally found a home.The Nashville Predators are his 12th professional hockey team in nine years. And he was on four different WHL junior teams, too.
In retrospect, the six-foot-two forward's problems began after he scored 70 goals for the 1988-89 Moose Jaw Warriors in his native Saskatchewan. The Hartford Whalers used their second pick to grab a scoring machine.
"Expectations were pretty high," he recalls.
He spent three years in the AHL falling down the Whalers' prospects list, first in Binghamton, N.Y., then in Springfield, Mass.
"I seemed to be taking a step back," he says. "I got lost in the shuffle in the Whalers' organization."
There was hope again when the Ottawa Senators claimed him in the 1992 expansion draft. But he played only four NHL games and was sent packing to a New Haven, Conn., AHL team.
He soon found himself, without a pro contract, playing senior hockey in North Battleford.
"I thought hockey was almost done for me," he says.
He would try again.
He joined a Columbus, Ohio, ECHL club to get back into condition. The Portland, Me., AHL team took him on, then it was back to Springfield. He split 1994-95 between a Minneapolis IHL team and a Worcester, Mass., AHL outfit.
"That had to be the worst team in pro hockey," he says. "That was just awful."
He joined Cape Breton's AHL team for 1995-96 when Lorne Molliken, his coach with the Moose Jaw juniors, took him in. He proved he wasn't finished when he scored 30 goals.
"By this time, I realized all I had been doing was trying to please the people I was playing for, to meet their expectations," he says. "I said to myself, 'To hell with it. I'll play the way I want to play and if people don't like it to hell with them.'
"There are a lot more things to life than hockey. I came back with a more mature attitude."
The AHL's Hershey, Pa., team signed him to a contract to play for $42,500 in 1996-97, and he helped the Bears win the Calder Cup. He was an AHL all-star.
He was headed back to the NHL, where now he makes $350,000. Calgary and St. Louis both called, and he settled on the Blues. Joel Quenneville had coached the ECHL team he played for and remembered him. Atcheynum had become a solid two-way player. Quenneville put him on a checking line with Craig Conroy and Scott Pellerin and he scored 11 goals in 61 games last season while the line shut down opponents' top lines.
"Once I got in the lineup, I never left it, until I broke by finger three games after the Olympic break."
He was surprised when Blues GM Larry Pleau telephoned him during his vacation at Jackfish Lake back home on the prairies to tell him he was going to be left unprotected in the expansion draft.
"I was disappointed. I'd had a good year with the Blues. But when I was selected by Nashville and they told me they wanted me on this team I felt good again. I'm happy to be here."
To hear head coach Barry Trotz talk, Atcheynum, 29, can unpack his bags for good.
"Positionally, he's a strong player," says Trotz. "What he lacks in quickness and skill, he makes up for with smarts and work ethic.
"He does a great job penalty-killing. When needed, you can move him up a line or two and he can produce offensively, too. Late in a game, when you need somebody to protect a lead, he's a guy you can rely on.
"He's an under-rated player. From our standpoint, he's a bit of a gem."