Wednesday thoughts

Another day, another player leaves the Edmonton Oil Kings for "personal reasons". This time it's 19 year old winger Scott Skrudland, following in the departing footsteps of Michael Hengen yesterday. Skrudland will head home to Manitoba and play Jr A there, just as Hengen is apparently bound for Jr A in B.C., where he wants to get on with his schooling as well. The Edmonton Journal has an article on the departures, as well as G.M. Bob Green's thoughts on replacing them on the roster.

The Oil Kings are now down to just 21 players - 13 forwards, 6 d-men, and 2 goaltenders - so they're going to have to bring somebody in from somewhere pretty soon. Only 1 extra player (and no extra d-men!) on your roster just doesn't work for any team.

The WHL has announced a press conference for tomorrow in which they will name the roster for the WHL's two games of the annual CHL-Russia snorefest which features the best Canadian World Junior hopefuls in the CHL taking on a team of Russian also-rans while planeloads of Russian scouts and team officials take notes on the Canadian players for use in the tournament. For the record, the Russian team has never won a game against the WHL in four years of this thing, going 0-8 and being outscored 47-11. This year's games will be held in Medicine Hat and Cranbrook.

Another, perhaps final, chapter has been written to the Ken Petkau saga; the Giants have placed Petkau on their suspended player list after he declined to report to them and has in fact stopped returning their phone calls. It would appear he is indeed retiring which is what he told Chilliwack in the first place. So, by putting Petkau on the suspended list, the Giants now have an opening for an overager again. By coincidence, Everett is going to have to make a decision on their O/As pretty soon as David Reekie comes off the 60 day injured list on November 9. The Tips moving Reekie may set off a chain reaction of deals which ends up filling either or both of Vancouver's and Edmonton's empty O/A slots, who knows.

One day after calling out his goaltending, Blades coach/G.M. Lorne Molleken is now calling out the entire team for "lack of desire". Must be a fun bus trip to be on. Cory Wolfe does seem to be enjoying himself though....his road trip diary is updated again this morning. Love the reference to Everett fan Marty Aalto.....that's got to be the same Marty who is a regular commenter here on this blog, eh?