Thursday notes

Canada topped Russia 4-1 last night in Saskatoon to go to 6-0 in the Superbad Series. Closer on the scoreboard than some of the games so far but keep in mind the shots on goal were 42-17 for Canada. Like I said after the 3rd game, a sweep is a distinct possibility in this thing, which would be a big embarrassment for Russian hockey. TSN's Bob McKenzie has a good take on this though; it looks like the 1988 and 1989 birth years may have been poor years for the Russian system, which would seriously impact this team since those are the birth years of most of the players in the tournament. Freak good and bad years do happen so it's entirely possible that this tournament is just a result of that and not the deterioration of Russian hockey. Look at the 1985 year which was a freakishly good year in Canada, especially in the WHL. Phaneuf, Getzlaf, Ladd, Seabrook, Fehr, Coburn, Weber, Dawes, Belle, Stone, Fraser, MacArthur, Meyer, Colliton....that is a rare amount of talent to see in one draft class. Add in players from elsewhere in Canada too like Staal, Fleury, Perry, Horton, Carter, Richards, Bergeron, etc....that was freakishly good. Compare that to the generally poor 1987 class in the WHL and it's easy to believe that the Russians might just have had a couple bad hockey-baby-making years in the late 80's. We'll see how they do at U-18's and U-20's in the next couple years as the 1990's and 1991's become the older players.

To the WHL now, the Saskatoon Blades unveiled their new website today. Not bad at all although I think the home page looks a little "busy". But, I thought it was reasonably fast (I always found the old Blades site slow?) and there's a couple nice features there like a blog (another one!) for Blades p-b-p guy Les Lazaruk, and either a blog or a repository for columns by Saskatoon Star-Phoenix beat writer Cory Wolfe.

Now we just need the Rockets to get their new site up.

Cody Gross is fitting in fine in Regina after two years in Prince Albert.

Cougars cuts, and G.M. Dallas Thompson shoots down Ty Wishart trade rumours.

And lastly, it's not WHL related, but one of the stories in the sports news here in Calgary is about the five streakers who disrupted the Labour Day football game here, and what should be done to curb that kind of behaviour. Personally, I'm in favour of just allowing the players to hit the idiots. As it stands, players aren't supposed to get involved and instead allow security to deal with them. But the thing is, it seems like the biggest part of the thrill for these people is how long they can evade security on the field. I think the thrill would evaporate in a hurry if instead of having their moment of glory as they evade a bunch of part-time security guards, they instead got a moment of embarrassment (and perhaps a few moments of pain) by being slammed to the turf by some 6'6", 300 lb monster in full football equipment. Remember the idiot who tried to streak a Calgary Flames NHL game a few years back? He climbed over the glass, then jumped to the ice, slipped, and knocked himself out cold. I guarantee he didn't have a good time. Neither did this guy. Or this guy. Or this guy. Or this guy. See the trend?

As an additional hockey note, that last clip might be at a baseball game but the fan being tackled is none other than former Michigan Tech (and current Robert Morris University) defenceman Jake Obermeyer.