Steve Guolla
Stephen Guolla ( born March 15, 1973 in Scarborough, Ontario ) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player. Since November 2009, he plays for the Tappara Tampere of the SM - liiga on the position of the center. In the National Hockey League, he was active for the San Jose Sharks, Tampa Bay Lightning, Atlanta Thrashers and New Jersey Devils.
Career
Guolla played for four years from 1991 to 1995 for the Michigan State University in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. After an excellent 1993/94 season he was selected to the third overall position of the Ottawa Senators NHL Supplemental Draft in 1994. However, the Canadians spent another year at the university, before he moved to the 1995/96 season at the Prince Edward Iceland Senators, the former Ottawa's farm team in the American Hockey League.
After his contract expired, he signed as a free agent contract with the San Jose Sharks, where he was employed in the 1996/97 season in roughly equal proportions in both the National Hockey League as well as in the AHL with the Kentucky Thoroughblades. In the following two seasons only followed sporadic operations at the San Jose Sharks, which he played more often for Thoroughblades. In the 1997/98 season of the Center for his 100 points in 69 games was awarded the Les Cunningham Award from the AHL for the Most Valuable Player of the regular season. Since the Canadians no longer use found at the Sharks, he was discharged in August 1999 together with Shawn Burr, Bill Houlder and Andrei Sjusin to the Tampa Bay Lightning, the transferred to San Jose in exchange Niklas Sundström.
In Tampa Guolla on first attempt to jump back into the NHL, but was set in the course of the season 1999/ 00 on the waiver list because the team had been looking for other players. From there, he was elected from the newly formed Atlanta Thrashers and Guolla could to spout his contract in the summer of 2001 to establish in the NHL strain squad of the team. After this period, the free agent to the New Jersey Devils, the only twelve times put him in the following three seasons in the NHL, but that was because that Guolla because of a persistent back injury missed large parts of the seasons 2002/ 03 and 2003/ 04.
Also due to the lockout in the 2004/05 season Guolla moved to Europe and played the season for a short time in the Swiss National League A for the Kloten Flyers. To the Game 2005 /06 he signed a contract with the Hannover Scorpions in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, but he left after a year and moved to Helsinki HIFK in the Finnish SM- liiga. For the game of 2008/ 09 he signed a contract with HC Innsbruck in the Austrian Erste Bank Hockey League.
Since November 2009 he is at Tappara Tampere under contract.