Guest Author: A Very Zebra Thanksgiving

On rare occasion, we've featured a guest author here on MayorsManor.  Today, we present a special Thanksgiving day piece by Scott Coffman. For the last few years he's been part of The Fourth Period Radio show and in between booking guests, he contributes articles to their magazine as well.

With the holidays right around the corner and today being (American) Thanksgiving, it’s time to give credit to those who have one of the hardest jobs in the NHL. No, it’s not Sidney Crosby’s concussion specialists, but the referees and linesman that keep control of every game and who are some of the most under-appreciated people in all of hockey.

We have to give thanks to referee Kelly Sutherland. His first NHL game was actually in Los Angeles on December 19, 2000. Since then, he's become one of the league’s top officials, as evidenced by being only one of three guys selected to officiate the last two Stanley Cup Finals - along with Dan O’Halloran and Stephen Walkom. Sutherland gained some notoriety last year during his appearances in HBO’s 24/7 Penguins vs Capitals series. In this video clip (warning, NSFW language), he's shown taking the time to explain a call to Penguins’ defenseman Brooks Orpik. While not every player may agree with the decisions made on the ice, strengthening communication goes a long way towards mutual understanding and developing a good player-referee relationship. It's also been announced that Sutherland will be wearing a microphone for tomorrow's nationally televised 'Thanksgiving Showdown' between Detroit and Boston.

Guest Author: D-man Kevin Gravel's USA camp journal

Kevin Gravel (photo: Cikiri)

Since the inception of MayorsManor, all articles and updates have been written by me. Sure, we've done countless interviews with players, coaches and other hockey people - yet, the content was always prepared by me.

We've also had the Kings' Jim Fox serve as our unofficial playoff reporter the last few seasons, providing his thoughts from the road when the team was away from Staples Center.

And yes, we've had guys like Jake Muzzin and Andrei Loktionov serve as as our Manchester correspondents, feeding us the latest Monarchs news.

Today, however, we enter a new phase at MayorsManor. For the first time ever, we have a guest author.

Kevin Gravel, selected by the Kings at the 2010 NHL Draft, has been on the site several times over the last year. This time is different though. He was kind enough to offer his perspective on what he experienced at this week's Team USA evaluation camp for the upcoming World Junior tournament.

In his own words, here's Gravel...

"Any time you get a chance to put on the USA jersey it is an opportunity you don’t take for granted. I've been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to represent my country in a few prior tournaments and I was looking forward to having a chance to do that again. When I finally got out to Lake Placid for the evaluation camp I was ready to get everything going.

The morning of the first day, we had our only practice - and it was a pretty tough practice. However, it allowed us get our feet wet for the games that were about to follow.

The first game two games of the camp we played inter-squad scrimmages. I was on Team Blue with Nick Shore, which put us up against (fellow Kings prospects) Derek Forbort and Michael Mersch.