The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec)
June 19, 2004 Saturday Final Edition

Flood of prospects try to make cut: 1,500 show skills CBC reality TV
show offers shot at NHL

by: JOHN MEAGHER

A 30-year-old pharmacist by day and a beer-league goalie by night,
Dikran Karlozian is one of 1,500 NHL longshots attending the Bell
Making The Cut Tryout Challenge this weekend at the 4-Glaces arena
complex in Brossard.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” said Karlozian, who was hoping
to survive yesterday’s round of cuts and eventually earn one of six
coveted invitations to an NHL training camp in 2005.

The three-day Montreal tryout camp is the last of seven stops in
a nationwide search for Canada’s best unsigned hockey players. The
public won’t know which skaters have been selected until the Making
The Cut reality television show airs this September on CBC and RDS.

While the odds of ever reaching the NHL are stacked against him,
Karlozian is taking an optimistic approach to his one and only kick
at the can.

“A 1-in-10,000 shot at the NHL is better than none at all,” he said.

“I’m looking at this as more of a chance to gauge myself against
better players out there. I honestly don’t actually expect to make
much of an impact unless I actually get some help from the hand of God,
or something.”

Since the Montreal camp began yesterday, legions of NHL wannabes
like Karlozian have gladly paid the $55 registration fee to be put
through their paces by a coaching staff headed by Scotty Bowman and
Mike Keenan. Assisting them will be Jacques Demers, Alain Vigneault
and Pierre McGuire.

A whittled-down group of players – or “survivors” – will be asked to
stick around for a series of contact 3-on-3 games in the afternoons.
Coaches and the scouting staff will then compare notes from the other
tryout camps held recently across the country, before issuing 68
invites to next month’s main tryout camp, to be held at an undisclosed
location.

>>From that shortlisted group, six eventual winners will be selected
to report to one of Canada’s NHL franchises: the Canadiens, Ottawa
Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers and
Vancouver Canucks.

Wesley and Shawn Scanzano, identical twin brothers from Dorval, also
headed to Brossard in hopes of some day landing a dream job in the NHL.

Last season, the undrafted Scanzano twins toiled in the minors for
the Tulsa Oilers of the Central Hockey League.

Wesley, a 23-year-old winger, has previously attended the NHL training
camp of the Phoenix Coyotes, but never caught on. He is viewing this
weekend’s tryout camp as another crack at an NHL career that’s eluded
him since his junior days with the Quebec Remparts, where he played
alongside future NHLers Mike Ribeiro, Simon Gagne and Eric Chouinard.

“I’ve nothing to lose,” he said. “I’m just going there to do my best
and hope something good happens. If not, we’ll move on.”

Scanzano says making the NHL is as much about timing as talent. “You
have to be in the right place at the right time. I’ve spent the past
couple of years trying to make the NHL, so I thought this might be
my last shot.”

Shawn Scanzano has tasted success before, but never at the NHL level.
As a rugged junior defenceman in 2000, he won a Memorial Cup with
Brad Richards and the Rimouski Oceanic. Richards won the Stanley Cup
this year with the Tampa Bay Lightning and was named the Conn Smythe
Trophy winner as playoff MVP.

Karlozian is a late bloomer who has improved with age.

A Montrealer of Armenian decent, he didn’t start playing organized
hockey until he was 16. He has spent much of the last 14 years making
up for lost ice time.

“Hockey has already changed my life,” said Karlozian, who was obese
as a child, weighing 260 pounds at age 12.

Now a more solid 230 pounds, he says his beer-league goaltending
skills give him the confidence to reach for the NHL.

“I just want to take my shot and have a little piece of mind at the
end,” he said. “If I make it, great. If I don’t, well, at least I
took my shot.

“Who knows? If I make a couple of big saves, I might catch the eye
of somebody important.

“But I’m not going to cry if I don’t make it, because I have very
good career to fall back on.”

jmeagher@thegazette.canwest.com

GRAPHIC: Photo: GORDON BECK, THE GAZETTE; Goalie hopeful Charline
Labonte, hoping to make the cut for the CBC reality series Making
The Cut, gets encouragement from NHL coaching greats Scotty Bowman
(left) and Mike Keenan at 4-Glaces Arena in Brossard.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress