Wranglers find their goal scorer

Nick Christensen

Friday, Oct. 1, 2004 | 10:12 a.m.

When center Greg Day left for Europe, Las Vegas Wranglers coach Glen Gulutzan knew he had a hole to fill scoring-wise.

Day logged 64 points on 20 goals last season for the expansion Wranglers, leading the team in points even though he had an extensive midseason call-up to Triple-A Lowell.

So when Gulutzan saw that forward Rejean Stringer was available after a year with Salzburg in the Austrian league, he began recruiting him right away.

"I've been working on him all summer," Gulutzan said. "To be an import over there, you have to be very good to make that kind of money."

Last season in 37 games at Salzburg, Stringer scored 38 goals and added 48 assists, with only 32 penalty minutes. In his last season in the ECHL, Stringer had 96 points with 37 goals in 72 games for Columbia, and was selected to the ECHL All-Star team.

Stringer, reached late Thursday from his home in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan -- a town that more closely resembles a French village in Quebec than an outpost on the Canadian prairie -- said that when he came back from Europe, he knew that Gulutzan's team would be competitive.

"I played with Gully before in Fresno," said Stringer. "Las Vegas was pretty good last year. This summer I talked to Gully, and I decided on a team that made a run for it. I want to go for (a championship) this year."

With Columbia in 2003, Stringer was a part of the Inferno club that lost to Atlantic City in five games in the Kelly Cup final.

Thursday, the Wranglers also announced that they re-signed center Tom Nelson. Nelson had 10 goals and 20 assists last season, with a particularly strong run in January. But he took time off to pursue a career with the FBI, then suffered an injury while practicing to get back in game form.