Front-runner emerges for GM of city’s NHL team

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/06/2011 (5540 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — A front-runner has emerged to be the general manager of Winnipeg’s new NHL team.

Chicago Blackhawks assistant GM and senior director of hockey operations Kevin Cheveldayoff is hot on the radar of Canada’s seventh NHL franchise.

After a Thursday meeting with True North chairman Mark Chipman and hockey senior vice-president Craig Heisinger at the NHL’s scouting combine, current Atlanta Thrashers GM Rick Dudley does not appear to be a slam-dunk to move with the club to Winnipeg. Nobody at True North will talk about it and there are strong rumblings here that Dudley will either be re-assigned or dismissed, that True North wants to go in another direction with its own people.

The Free Press spoke to Cheveldayoff here this morning. His first response when asked for a conversation was that such a request would have to go through the Blackhawks.

On his way out of the Toronto Congress Centre, he stopped to talk but had little to say, mostly that he couldn’t comment about the possibility that he’d spoken to Heisinger in previous days or that Winnipeg has asked for the Hawks’ permission to talk to him.