I saw a tweet from the Florida Panthers that Bracken Kearns will be making his NHL debut tonight and I cannot tell a lie. I said, who the heck is Bracken Kearns? My first thought was, I wonder if hes any relation to Dennis Kearns. And, as fate, would have it, yes, indeed he is the son of the former NHL defenceman who played 10 seasons and more than 600 regular-season games with the Vancouver Canucks in the 1970s. But, get, this, Bracken Kearns is making his NHL debut tonight and hes 30 years old. "Its a really nice story," Panthers assistant GM Mike Santos said. "Hes one of those guys who has just worked so hard for everything." Today, Kearns is flying into south Florida. And tonight, hell be in the lineup against the Buffalo Sabres. Kearns played Canadian university hockey at the University of Calgary from 2001 to 2005. He started his pro hockey odyssey with Toledo in the East Coast Hockey League and was "discovered" there by the Nashville Predators, who signed him to play with Milwaukee of the AHL in his second pro season. Santos was in the Nashville organization at the time and said Kearns isnt the first or last guy to be noticed in the Coast. "Jerred Smithson, Rich Peverley, there are a lot of guys we saw in the Coast and they worked their way up," Santos said. Kearns made AHL stops along the way, two years in Norfolk, one each in Rockford and San Antonio, where he scored 20 goals last season. This past summer, Florida GM Dale Tallon signed Kearns to a two-way NHL-AHL contract. Tallon and Dennis Kearns were teammates back in the early days of the Canucks. Bracken Kearns had three goals in his first three AHL games with the Rampage this season. So when Shawn Matthias went down with an injury, the call went out to to the 30-year-old forward this morning. "Its funny," Panthers GM Tallon said, "I got a phone call from Dennis (Kearns) wishing me well on my birthday yesterday and I told him Bracken had a good camp and he would get an opportunity at some time down the road. I didnt realize it would be today." So as NHL amateur scouts look at the 1994 birth years for this years NHL draft, the "kid" born in 1981 will skate out tonight for his first NHL game. And how cool is that? Very. cheap jerseys .C. -- Gerald Henderson is enjoying the best streak of his four-year NBA career, and the Charlotte Bobcats are playing better, too. cheap nfl jerseys . Toews skated up to Thornton with about 4 1/2 minutes left in the first period, jabbed him with his stick and then dropped his gloves. The star captains tangled up for a minute before Thornton dragged Toews to the ice and the referees skated in. http://www.cheapchinajerseynfl.us.co... . Kingsbury missed a chance to break Jeremy Blooms 2005 record of six World Cup wins in a row. Like his one-time idol, Kingsbury followed his six-event winning streak with a second-place showing. [url=http://www.cheapchinajerseynfl.us.com/]wholesale nfl jerseys ., was alone atop the leaderboard at 9-under-par 204 on Saturday at the 107th Canadian mens amateur championship. wholesale jerseys .Y. - The Buffalo Sabres have recalled rookie defenceman Rasmus Ristolainen two days after he was sent down to the minors.Got a question on rule clarification, comments on rule enforcements or some memorable NHL stories? Kerry Fraser wants to answer your emails at cmonref@tsn.ca! Hi Kerry, First off love your column! Can you discuss the Andrew Desjardins hit on Jamal Mayers on Tuesday? I am baffled that he got a five-minute major and a match penalty for the hit. To me, Desjardins hit looked completely clean. When Mayers received the puck, it appeared as though Desjardins hit Mayers cleanly shoulder-to-shoulder. This was such a key moment in the game as the Desjardins penalty negated all the momentum San Jose received from the hit, and the 4 minute power play (the Keith double-minor) they would have gotten if the hit wasnt called. Do you have any explanation for why they did call it a hit to the head? Thanks. Sincerely,Jeff Madsen Jeff: I completely agree that Andrew Desjardins delivered a clean, open-ice hockey hit on Jamal Mayers after receiving a suicide pass from his Hawk teammate Duncan Keith. Desjardins executed a perfect shoulder-to-shoulder check and neither targeted Mayers head nor did it become the principle point of contact. To be perfectly blunt, at no time did Andrew Desjardins even make contact to the head of Jamal Mayers! In answer to your question, let me attempt to provide some explanation as to how the officials could assess a match penalty under Rule 48.5 — Illegal Check to the Head; the most severe penalty in the book. Aside from the five- minute time penalty and expulsion from the game, the player is automatically suspended from further competition until the commissioner (or his designate) has ruled on the issue. After this hit and order had been restored following the fight that was instigated by Duncan Keith, the four officials gathered for a lengthy conference at the referees creasee.dddddddddddd Each member of the crew offered his opinion given the angle and sightline he had on the play. At least one of the crew would have felt certain (from his vantage point) that Desjardins had deliberately attempted to injure Mayers with an illegal check to the head. It appeared to me that one of the linesman provided considerable input prior to arriving at a final decision. Following the shoulder-to-shoulder contact delivered by Desjardins, the impact caused the San Jose player to finish the check with his right arm moving in an upward/high position. This could give the impression from a certain angle that contact had been delivered directly to the head of Mayers. While this obviously did not occur, it is reasonable to assume that at least one of the officials was positive he saw this occur. A penalty of this magnitude would not be assessed unless at least one of the officials made the case that he was "certain" of what he saw before laying his neck on the block. An obvious mistake was made on this call and the match penalty to Desjardins was rescinded, expunged from his record and he will return to the San Jose Sharks active roster immediately. The officials are not the only ones that erred on this play. After watching footage, I am certain that in the future, Duncan Keith will make the safe, smart play that was available to him with an outlet pass on the left wing boards to Michael Frolik. Aside from the pass being in Mayers skates, Keith should have seen that Desjardins was plugging up the middle and Mayers presented an easy target while looking back to receive a pass, whether on the tape or in the skates. Fortunately, Mayers did not appear to sustain an injury on the play. The correct call on this one would have seen Keith in the box for 14 minutes while the Sharks went on a four-minute power play. cheap jerseys wholesale jerseys ' ' '