By JOHN DELL
Inquirer Staff Writer
A Canoe for a Battleship.
That’s the headline a Montreal newspaper put on the trade last week that brought Jimmy Lynch here for Ross Jones.
The paper thought the Wings got the battleship in the deal with the Montreal Quebecois.
Spectrum fans will get a chance at 8:05 o’clock tonight to judge which National Lacrosse League team gained the most firepower.
Jim Hinkson, the Wings coach, considers the Lynch deal the most important his club has ever made. He gave up a player who had been a real disappointment for one of the game’s best lefthanded stickmen.
“Lynch is an experienced ball handler who will fit right into our system,” Hinkson said about the clever shooter who was the league’s 11th scorer last season with 137 points.
The 23-year old was exchanged for a 23-year old who was struggling to re-establish himself in a game that has changed considerably during a five-year period when Jones was out of the sport.
The Wings feel they never would have been able to get Lynch for Jones, except for two reasons:
1, Lynch was in the doghouse of Montreal coach Jim Bishop, the founding father of the league,
2, Bishop has fond memories of Jones, who starred on six straight Minto Cup (Canadian junior championship) Bishop-coached teams between 1964 and 1969. The masterful coach believes he’ll be able to rekindle the spark in Jones, who was a great scoring star before his years of retirement.
Lynch played with the Wings for the first time Sunday night at Boston. It was Hinkson’s intention to slowly work him into the Wings’ system, but to put him on the crease in the Wings’ power-play unit as soon as he’s ready.
From the first day he joined the Wings, Lynch has been spending much of his practice time getting used to the tricky passes of power-play pointman John Grant.
By tonight Lynch may be ready to fire a broadside at a canoe.
(Philadelphia Inquirer, June 10, 1975)