Chiefs Feel Better With Bitter Ference Returns With His Nhl Skills Price Albert At Spokane
Spokane’s next millionaire was in the Arena parking lot this week, climbing into his car, the one with the personalized plates that bear his nickname.
Bitter.
Brad Ference earned it from the start, as a skinny 168-pound 16-year-old who hated sitting. Back then, and through the following season, he wore a glum expression when he wasn’t playing - and sometimes even when he was.
The Ference look was a match for the beer commercial, the one where the guy takes a sip of something light and breaks into the bitter beer face.
Ference has grown since then - from a callow rookie out of Calgary to a first-round draft choice who goes into his 19-year-old season tonight with National Hockey League skills.
When the 19-year-old defenseman returned to the Spokane Chiefs last Saturday, after an extended stay with the NHL Vancouver Canucks, you could sense the relief all the way from management to the clubhouse attendant.
On a team hurting for a physical, veteran presence, Ference is a gift from the hockey gods.
Veterans Derek Schutz and Cam Severson are out with injuries. Ty Jones is starting with the Chicago Blackhawks. Kyle Rossiter, among others, has played as if he’s skating on a tight rope - fearing that one bad move and the whole game might fall apart.
Ference takes some of the pressure off a team looking for its first win tonight, when the Chiefs meet the Prince Albert Raiders in the Arena.
Having Ference back among the last wave of cuts out of Vancouver means “a world-class player coming back to your team,” Chiefs coach Mike Babcock said. “He makes a huge difference.”
If there’s panic in the Chiefs’ 0-3-2 start you won’t detect it in Ference, whose stolid OK, bitter countenance lights up when he allows himself that rare, genuine smile.
He has reason to smile these days. Ference and the Canucks - who made him the 10th pick of the ‘97 entry draft - seem close to an agreement.
“I thought I played pretty well in the five games up there,” Ference said. “It was my second year (in camp with the Canucks). I knew what to expect, kind of. The main thing is the way the guys work. It’s more of a job. Some guys are 30 with two kids at home and a wife to support. It’s their livelihood. They’re not going to give it up very easily.
“Before this camp I didn’t really know if I could play at that level. I’d played two exhibition games the year before but it was limited duty. This year, the minimum time I played in every game was at least 20 minutes. So I got to get into the flow and felt that I belonged.”
Playing on the power play and penalty kill, Ference had two assists against the Phoenix Coyotes, and wound up with three points in five preseason games.
Back in the Western Hockey League he and an elite handful - Robyn Regehr of Kamloops, Scott Hannan of Kelowna, Eric Brewer of Prince George and Portland’s Andy Ference (no relation) - rank as the West’s premier defensemen.
“The big difference is Brad is still developing physically,” Babcock said. “He has unbelievable feet and passing skills, and has an edge (as a fighter) to him that no one except Regehr has.
“Some of those guys are bigger right now, but they’re all closer to what they’ll be as men. The upside on Brad Ference is he has a lot left in him.”
Ference, who’ll probably top out at 6-4 and 215, noticed the difference the moment he stepped back on the ice for practice this week.
“You can tell right away the guys (in the NHL) are bigger - not so much height-wise as thicker,” he said. “The passes are crisper. Practices up there were 45 minutes to an hour. Here they’re usually 2 hours. What you get accomplished in 2 hours here you get accomplished there in 45 minutes …
“The checks you see here - the big open-ice checks - there’s rarely if ever those kinds of hits up there. Guys are just too aware of what’s around them. They don’t get caught in those situations where they get hit like that.”
Ference is looking for the same kind of money Jones pocketed during the summer in Chicago. Jones agreed to a three-year deal worth $2.75 million, with more than $1.3 million as a signing bonus. Ference is willing to sacrifice some of the up-front money for more at the end of the package.
“The last year of the contract is big,” he said. “In the NHL, in the last year of your contract, the qualifying offer is 10 percent above (your salary). Say if you got, oh, $900,000 your last year of the contract, then your qualifying offer is going to be almost a million. If you get $700,000, then your qualifying offer will be $770,000. That’s what we’re trying to work out.
“Ty got a lot of money up front. I might get maybe $100,000 less in the bonus, but that will be made up in the end. It’s all basically around the same money, within reason.”
Junior hockey re-entry had to be a bit of a letdown to a kid who came so close to making it this year, but Ference said, “I’ve never really had a problem coming back anywhere. When I was younger I was cut by higher teams and had to go back to my own age level. This is going to be nothing but good for me, to play as much as I’m going to be playing, and getting in every situation.”
“He’s going to be playing a ton,” Babcock said.
Ference is aware of the pitfalls in trying to do too much too soon.
“I’ll just take it how it is,” he said. “You don’t want to change much. Last year on the power player we had Leebo (Greg Leeb) on that one side and he’d feed the one-timer to me in the middle. I don’t think anything’s going to change. We just have to find someone to take Leeb’s place.”
As they say, therein lies the rub. Greg Leebs don’t grow on trees in this league.
“Yeah, but we have some skilled guys,” Ference countered. “I think (Dan) Bohac will do fine on the wall, giving me the passes. There are other guys. (Brandin) Cote is going to step up. (Lynn) Loyns is a skilled player. We’re not that far away.”
If it turns out they are, you’ll be able to read it all over Brad Ference’s face, rightly or wrongly.
Bitter.
“He’s such an intense guy, people get the wrong read on him,” Babcock said. “Because of his intensity sometimes you think he’s in a bad mood all the time. He’s not. That’s the way he is.”
Ference - who takes courses at Community Colleges of Spokane - explains how the tag stuck.
“It came the first couple of practices when I was 16,” he said. “In hockey it’s different with your teammates. You’re allowed to go at it and still be friends after. It’s not like any other sport, where if you did that (fought) you’d be lifelong enemies.
“I was trying to get into the lineup. I was real focused. I wasn’t a very pleasant guy to hang around with for a while.”
He smiled, almost grinned. Times change. These days, Brad Ference can hang out with just about anybody he wants.