OTHL -- Recently teams were given permission from the league to go ahead and acquire players from outside of the league. Some teams were enthused by this and sent many scouts all over the place searching for those diamonds in the rough. Some teams did not believe there were any gems out there and some teams were just too dam cheap to pay scouts. The first wave of "players from outside the OTHL" have joined teams and some interesting names are among them.
Former Toronto defenseman Dmitri Yushkevich agreed to hand over his rights to his former team, the Leafs. Dmitri has been competing in Russia for the last year but has been pondering a return. Dallas was a very busy team, bringing in Lubos Bartecko, Mikko Eloranta and Sergei Berezin. The most interesting bids came out of Europe since some of the players have played and succeeded in the bigs before. Oleg Tverdovsky may be the most interesting pickup, Colorado grabbed him for between 1 - 2 million dollars. Some other names from Europe, Vitali Yachmenev and Vadim Sharifijanov both handed their rights to Tampa Bay.
The majority of teams did not however go with proven talent, they went out and found some young talent and will give them a shot. San Jose and Vancouver were the busiest in this department picking up 5 prospects each. San Jose got Andy Roach, Shane Joseph, Aaron Gill, Scott Ford and Eric Himelfarb. Probably the most interesting prospect there would be Shane Joseph who is a rather smallish player but he has a ton of talent and if he can turn it on in the pros, look out! Vancouver netted Mike Glumac, David Masse, Cole Jarrett, Greg Zanon and JP Cote. Glumac, 24 who is 6'2, 200lb and has proven that he can play at the professional level already and he will be looking to make the next step as early as this season. Buffalo was also a busy team picking up 4 prospect, while Tampa picked up 1. Bidding is expected to continue at a reduced but steady rate throughout the season. Who knows, there could be a diamond left sitting out there yet!
All players are expected to check-in with their new teams tomorrow, August 24th.