Saying goodbye … and hello

Oct. 23, 2007

As we approach the 2007–08 Winter Season, we must bid the inevitable goodbyes to our Spider colleagues who have been drafted to the majors. This year, we won’t be lacing up with:

• Ben Tesch
  • Ben heads west to Seattle, where he’ll be joining the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League. Ben played two seasons with the Spiders, starting in 2005–06.
• Jeff Keacher
  • One of the founding Spiders, Goalkeeper Jeff Keacher is also taking his gear bag west to the Bay Area (San Jose Sharks? Golden Seals? SF Spiders?) We’ll keep an eye on the Mercury News sportspage. After three great years of netminding, the team won’t be the same without Jeff.

Good luck, guys! We’ll miss you!

And, as a part of the D1/C2 split, five additional players will be permanently moving up to the C2 squad:

• Dave Schliesman
• Lee Martini (who thought he’d miss us too much so will stick around and sub on D1)
• Jim Maietta
• Doug Thorson
• Bruce Gustafson

(Plus, Carlos Eberhardt and Brian Armagost will also sub at C2, but stay rostered on D1.)

Good luck C2 Spiders!

New Spiders

And, finally, we welcome the following new Spiders to the D1 squad:

• Mike Derer

  • Mike will take over the Spiders’ net this season. He comes to us from the Summer Level 4 Coyotes, where he earned the distinctive honor as the Level 4 division leader in penalty minutes! 25 minutes … as a goalie! LaCosse and Armel may have some company on far end of the scoresheet this year.

    Mike put up some impressive goalkeeping stats this summer:

    Derer summer stats

    Season	Team	GP	GA	Avg	Sh	Sv%	W	L	T	OTL	SO
    Summer 2007	Coyotes	13	34	2.62	278	0.878	10	3	0	0	1

• Aaron Bedesem, Mike Johnson and John McGrane
  • All join the Spiders via Brad Caron. (Brad — looking for a big recruiter fee?)
• John Peterson
  • John comes to the Spiders from the Thunder Chickens, where he’s played for the past three years, including the Thunder Chickens’ Beginner School season, which was the same year as the Spiders’. John also played with the Spiders in last year’s JMS Preseason Tournament as well as the combined ThunderSpiders team in summer 2006.

Welcome guys!