| HARTFORD,
Conn. - The Cincinnati Stingers have an impressive, crop of good college hockey players
this year, signing three to contracts and seeing all three currently with the major league
team. Goaltender Mike Liut from Bowling Green and defenseman Craig Norwich of Wisconsin
started the season with the big club, while forward Bill Gilligan was sent to the Hampton,
Va., farm in the American Hockey League. Gilligan quickly established himself as one of
the top rookies in the AHL and last week he was called up by the Stingers on a trial
basis. He fit into the picture immediately, taking a center position and performing
impressively. "I really can't tell how well I'll be able to do or if I can stay up
with the Stingers" the Brown University grad noted. "I did pretty well in the
American League but I've only played a couple of games and I can't tell how much better
the hockey is at this level." Gilligan, a psychology
major at Brown, said he came into the Stingers organization almost blindly because
"I really hadn't followed the World Hockey Association and didn't even know what
Cincinnati had. I couldn't determine ahead of time if I would be able to make the team
because I didn't know anything about it." Gilligan, A native of Beverly, Mass.,
All-New England and All-ECAC selection in his junior and senior years at Brown,
assists in three varsity seasons. In the past, college hockey players have been overlooked
by the pros in many cases, the knock being that college players simply don't get the
experience provided by the Canadian junior leagues and, therefore, the good players don't
go to college.
Gilligan feels that trend has begun to change with pro scouts
playing more attention to the Eastern and Midwestern colleges which are turning out more
first-rate hockey players. "There are the most players in the junior leagues, so
you're not going to get the number of people coming out of college that you do from the
juniors," the 23 year old center said. "But there are many more good players
going to college now than a few years ago. The better players stayed in the junior leagues
because they couldn't get any recognition playing in the US college. Now the pro scouts
are keeping an eye on the colleges and more players are going to school. It has one
advantage. If hockey doesn't work out you still have an education."
Like most Ivy League schools, Brown has a high scholastic ranking,
and Gilligan pointed out that maintaining his studies and playing hockey was difficult.
"There was always the dilemma of whether to devote more time to hockey of the
books," he said. "When the hockey wasn't going well, I would pay more attention
to studies, and when the books weren't going too well I'd think more about trying
professional hockey." Brown, like all Ivy schools, had no athletic scholarships and
Gilligan played hockey because he wanted to, not because is paid his way through school.
He expects to go to graduate school eventually, after he gets a better look at pro hockey. |
