Monday, September 24, 2012

Huskies Add Former Vipers Goaltender Voth To Roster:

The University of Saskatchewan Huskies have added former Vernon Vipers goaltender Blake Voth to their roster.  Voth started last season with the USHL Muskegon Lumberjacks before signing with the SJHL Melville Millionaires.  In two games with the Lumberjacks Voth went 0-2 with a 6.50 GAA In 28 games with the Millionaires Voth went 16-11-1 with a 3.05 GAA in his final year of Junior hockey.  Voth played two seasons in Vernon (2009-2011) In 64 games with the Vipers Voth went 46-13-3 collecting 7 shutouts.  Voth was traded on May 26th 2011 to the SJHL Battlefords Stars as part of the future considerations in the trade that sent Dane Muench to the Vipers on the January 2011 trade deadline. Voth never played with the Stars before playing with Muskegon and Melville.

Blake Voth's Player Profile:

http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=124979

This was in last week's StarPheonix Newspaper:

Huskies add goalie on emergency basis

By Darren Zary, The StarPhoenix September 20, 2012

Needing an emergency replacement in net, Dave Adolph looked under dial-a-goalie in his contact list and dug up the name Blake Voth.

It was Voth who had inquired in the off-season about whether the University of Saskatchewan Huskies - already solid in net with veteran returnees David Reekie and Ryan Holfeld - would consider adding a third goalie to their roster.

At the time, this was not something the hockey Huskies wanted to do, not with two veteran goalies already sharing playing time.

When Reekie got in a motor vehicle accident a couple of weeks ago, everything changed.

With Reekie out indefinitely and unable to suit up for two exhibition games this past weekend in Regina, the call went out to Voth, who happily obliged to fill the void.

Voth, a five-foot-10 goalie from Herbert, was already studying at the U of S, so it wasn't a difficult recruiting process.

"We were fortunate - Blake Voth, who's a Saskatchewan kid who had lots of options to go to various schools - but he's a farmer by heart and he got into ag resource management here and he was on campus," Adolph said.

"He's going to be our No. 2 guy until Christmas, probably."

Voth won a Royal Bank Cup national junior A hockey championship with the BCHL's Vernon, B.C. Vipers and reached the league final with them the following year. He won the goaltender of year award and broke a goals-against average record in 2009-10 with Vernon.

Voth was the top playoff performer and fan favourite with the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League's Melville Millionaires last season.

"I talked to Dave at the start of the off-season and nothing really panned out," Voth explained, adding that he wanted to take agriculture and had a couple of offers to go elsewhere but decided to go to the U of S.

"I got a call a couple of weeks ago and he asked me if I wanted to come out and I decided to go with it.

"I'm definitely very thankful, that's for sure. It's a good opportunity for me and hopefully I can make the best of it.

"I'm having fun while it lasts so far."

In some ways, Voth has followed the same career path as Holfeld. Both of them played midget triple-A with the Tisdale Trojans and both of them ended up in the BCHL, although Holfeld spent most of his junior career in the Western Hockey League.

"I like to play in the big games, that's for sure," said Voth, who said he considers himself a clutch goaltender.

It's unclear whether Voth would remain on the team's roster for the remainder of the season.

"Everybody talks about having a third goalie, but what do you do with him on the ice?" Adolph asked. "A third goalie is a nice luxury, but it's difficult to manage in the practice scenario and there's no game time and we only play 28 league games.

"It's more of a player management thing. It's nice to have somebody in the bullpen, but it's certainly not fair."

Reekie is out another four to six weeks with cracked ribs and a bruised sternum.

"It all depends on how he recovers," Adolph said of Reekie, who got out of the hospital last Thursday and resumed classes this week, "but he's got some internal injuries. He smacked his car pretty good.

"He's on the road to recovery." DOG TALES: Brennan Bosch, who is still recovering from knee surgery, has been elected the new captain of the hockey Huskies. He replaces graduate Kyle Ross. Assistants include Chris Durand, Derek Hulak and Andrew Bailey.

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