For a week that didn’t see any regular season games, there’s been a lot of exciting Aussie hockey news. Between the Trans-Tasman Champions League, Nathan Walker attending the Washington Capitals development camp and the usual Melbourne hockey activity, I can barely even keep up! Here’s a somewhat organised news post after the jump…

Trans-Tasman Champions League

As you probably all know by now, Melbourne Ice won the inaugural TTCL tournament on goal differential. Game writeups abound. We only covered the final game in detail (so much detail) but there are also game recaps from the AIHL, On The Fly and Hewitt Sports. And for a New Zealander’s perspective, our good friend Goodbye Puck Pie with some very detailed reporting and analysis. (But you can’t have Baclig. He’s ours.)

The International Ice Hockey Federation also has a front-page piece on the tournament this week. It even got a mention in Paul’s Ice Hockey Blog from the UK.

Other AIHL and NZIHL news

The big story of the week: finals to be held in Newcastle this year. I really want to go, but we’ll see what happens. It’s still almost two months away, and I kind of have to work on Monday…

Conference leaders clash – the weekly Fairfax wrap has a brief recap of the TTCL with more of a focus of the weekend ahead of us, particularly the long-awaited grand final rematch in Newcastle.

A Kiwi in Paris – great story about one of the Dunedin Thunder’s young local players and his experience playing in France.

Nick Does Hockey is hosting a series of guest posts about other Melbourne locals and their experiences learning to play ice hockey. My favourite so far is Alex McNab’s It’s (only mostly) a man’s world.

Walker Watch

Nathan Walker wasn’t picked up in the NHL draft this year, but in the week that followed we heard via Twitter that he’d been invited to the Washington Capitals’ development camp as a free agent. He did an interview for Hewitt Sports’ podcast last week saying he’d been invited to the San Jose Sharks’ dev camp as well, though he didn’t give any indication at the time as to whether he’d accept either invitation. (I did have a bit of a snicker when he said he was invited to Sharks camp by ‘a guy from Melbourne’. Gosh, I wonder who that could have been?) The Capitals put out their dev camp roster, but it didn’t include free agents, and Aussie hockey fans quietly wondered what was going on.

And then Monday came, and reporters and bloggers at the Capitals’ dev camp started tweeting that Walker was in attendance. While there wasn’t a lot of interest in him on day one, he scored the lone goal for the white team on day two’s scrimmage. Several of the media folks in attendance made a few comments about him on twitter throughout the camp, and he’s started getting a mention in a few writeups:

• Russian Machine Never Breaks has a few words in their piece about him in their recap of the day two scrimmage
• Caps Across The Pond paid some extra attention to Walker in their day two writeup
• NBC Washington have a profile piece on Walker and Italian prospect Thomas Di Pauli

And while twitter isn’t necessarily news in its own right, some of the tweets from dev camp do warrant a mention:

Walker looking good so far for the white squad. Not afraid of contact even though he is a small kid #CapsDevCamp

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Caps Across The Pond (@CapsAcrossPond) July 10, 2012

Here is the video of Walker's goal in the final seconds. Australian hockey fans, you are welcome! He had a big day! yfrog.us/0b38tyz

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Caps Across The Pond (@CapsAcrossPond) July 10, 2012

If you close your eyes and listen to #Caps Camp participant Nathan Walker, sounds like Daniel Radcliffe. Super nice kid.

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Adam Vingan (@AdamVingan) July 10, 2012

(Daniel Radcliffe? Really)

Man... Nathan Walker really is WORSHIPPED among Australian hockey fans. Crazy support on twitter. #Caps #CapsDevCamp

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Jake Ware (@JacobWare95) July 11, 2012

… yeah, I guess we are. But thank you to all the Caps writers on Twitter for keeping us informed. I’d say how much we appreciate it, but it looks like you already know. The camp still has a few more days to run, so there may well be more news on Walker later in the week. The Capitals are live streaming the Saturday scrimmage if you’re inclined to watch; given that it starts at midnight on Sunday in Melbourne time, I probably won’t, but I’m sure plenty of hardier Aussie fans will be tuning in.

So that’s your lot for this week. Feel free to drop us a line if there’s anything you want to draw to our attentions. Now, bring on the weekend!