Prince Albert Herald

Raiders new imports arrive in Prince Albert

--PRINCE ALBERT-- The Prince Albert Raiders welcomed their two first-round picks from the 2011 Central Hockey League Import Draft, both of whom carved up fresh ice at the Art Hauser Centre Tuesday for the first time.

“When I walked in here I felt the aura, I like it,” said Kristaps Bazevics, the Raiders 24th overall pick in this year’s import draft. “It’s good.”

Both Bazevics and Jonas Knutsen – the Raiders 15th pick in the import draft – arrived late Monday afternoon and were anxious to acquaint themselves with prospective teammates and their new home rink.

The Latvian Bazevics – from Riga - turned 17 on Aug. 2 and for a unforgiving, sturdy defenceman, looked fluid on the ice as knocked the biscuit around during an impromptu mini-scrimmage. 

The six-foot-one defenceman is oscillating around the 200-pound mark, and said the transition to the Western Hockey League will be a challenge, but is made easier by his familiarity with North America.  

“I think it will be a little bit easier because I’ve been travelling and adjusting before,” said Bazevics, who played in Los Angeles three season ago and has been training with former NHL bruising blue-liner Jamie Huscroft in Seattle prior to his arrival in Prince Albert.

Bazevics is living with Raiders’ centre Mike Winther, which should allow for a smoother, less abrupt acclimatization.

Playing in front of 500 people in February, Bazevics said, is the largest crowd in which he has showcased his talents. But only excitement reverberates through the Latvian when contemplating about playing in front of thousands of raucous fans, friendly or hostile.

Before Bazevics hopped on a plane bound for the prairies, he knew little of what awaited him this side of the pond.

“I’ve heard it’s 35,000 people. I knew that it was pretty flat here and next to river, that’s about it,” said Bazevics, who played last season in the Swedish J18 Elite League with Lidingo.

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In 2003, William Puckett decided to shoulder a thankless load by setting up a UFO Web page out of his home in Seattle. He called it UFOs Northwest , and the idea was to give people a place to report what they saw under the cloak of anonymity.

Puckett doesn’t handle the sort of monster traffic that flows into the Mutual UFO Network , or Peter Davenport’s National UFO Reporting Center , but he’ll get maybe two or three reports a day, which keeps him busy enough. And, reflecting age-old trends, he says he’d classify only 3 to 5 percent as “really compelling.”

He’s partial to reports involving electromagnetic effects; in 2009, for instance, a literally hair-raising late-night incident in New Mexico  involved a carhauler who said a triangular UFO temporarily drained power from his flashlight, his rig, and every car on the back of his trailer. Naturally, Puckett can’t verify this one, or most of the others, for that matter. But he says his BS meter is fully operational, and he figures 10 to 15 percent of his calls are hoaxes.

But now, Puckett, MUFON, NUFORC, et al., are bracing for a tsunami of 100 percent certified pure unadulterated crud.

At 8 o’clock EDT Sunday evening — the day after a California radio preacher predicts the world will end — a network of hackers calling themselves Anonymous will launch “Operation UFO” by flooding Web sites with fake reports of a triangle distinguished by eight yellow lights. Anonymous says its goal is “to strike fear into the idiots of the world,” which will presumably reach its high-water mark as the idiotic global media puts a full-court press on this spectacular non-event by time the sun rises Monday morning.

This gag is as original as cutting armpit farts and maybe half as instructive. “Most hoaxers aren’t too smart,” says Puckett. “Generally you don’t announce a hoax in advance because everybody will know about it.”

And who couldn’t feel at least a twinge of sympathy for Davenport? He’s been enduring juvenile behavior for 17 years with NUFORC. “This is nothing new. There have been at least a half dozen organized attempts to generate an international hoax among investigators and the people who cover UFOs in the press,” he says. “This is yet another reflection on how the Internet allows people to behave in an irresponsible fashion with impunity.

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