JURCO FINALLY GOES VIRAL

By Bert Richardson
Station Nation Staff

On Marc h 11, 2010, the Saint John Sea Dogs visited Centre 200 to play the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. Several things happened in that game: some man slipped on the ice after the game and was taken off on a stretcher, we lost a bet to the Cape Breton Post and still owe them a seal flipper pie, Sea Dogs captain Mike Thomas did colour commentary on News 88.9, and, most importantly, it was only Saint John’s second shootout loss of the season.

In that shootout, Tomas Jurco did this:



The following day in Sea Dogs post-game notebook, we had highlights of the goal along with a screen shot. JT called it “one the greatest shootout goals ever seen in a Canadian Hockey League game.”

Now, roughly six months later, Jurco’s goal is finally getting recognized.

Thanks in much part to Yahoo! Sports’ junior hockey blog “Buzzing the Net” and then later having the video linked to the popular NHL blog “Puck Daddy”, the video went somewhat viral six months after its prime.

The publicity led to TSN doing on a feature on Jurco yesterday which appeared on the evening broadcast of SportsCentre.



It was solid feature and hopefully several “casual fans” may decide to come out and watch the Slovak continue to develop like we all did last season.

Several people brought to our attention that TSN called Saint John “hardly the epicenter of the junior hockey world.”

It came off sounding kind of rude, but it probably wasn’t intentional (to come off that way). We wouldn’t exactly call it the “epicenter of junior hockey” either, but Saint John has a leg up on many CHL markets. Not to mention the fact that Saint John is one of the frontrunners to host the 2012 MasterCard Memorial Cup.

TSN also spelt Gerard Gallant’s name wrong. Apparently this is the biggest gaff in journalism.

They also listed Jurco with 15 points in six games when he actually has nine (six goals and three assists).

Also, TSN used our buddy Chris’ footage from Saturday’s game in Drummondville. This morning, the goal was listed as “trending” on the YouTube home page. The picture on the left is from this morning and picture on the right is from this afternoon. That’s a lot of page views.