Monday notes

The Winnipeg Thrashers picked a really bad time to suffer their second loss of the season yesterday. They lost 6-4 to the Sudbury Nickel Capital Wolves in the final of the Telus Cup, which means Sudbury is national AAA midget champions and Winnipeg is just a team with a 58-2 record. After that kind of season, I can only imagine the kind of hurt must be involved with losing the last and most important game.

The other western team also lost, with the Calgary Buffaloes dropping the bronze medal game 7-4 to the Quebec reps, so the Buffs finish 4th. Look for a bunch of players from the Thrashers and Buffaloes to be in the WHL next year.

Spokane now leads the WHL final 3 games to 2 after a double-OT win over Tri-City on Saturday night. In five games of that series, three of them have gone to double-OT now. That's more than one whole extra game these teams have played. Meanwhile, Lethbridge sits at home and rests up for their championship series against the winner. Games six and seven (if necessary) will be played tonight and tomorrow night, with the championship series likely getting underway on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Lethbridge has already scheduled games three and four to be on May 6 and 7 - next Tuesday and Wednesday.

The first trade in the WHL since the trade deadline happened over the weekend: Kamloops traded two of their four 2008 4th round bantam picks to Moose Jaw in exchange for the Warriors' 2009 3rd and 5th round picks. That's Craig Bonner's first deal as the Blazers G.M. and in making the deal, he has now replaced the 2009 3rd rounder that the Blazers had to give up in order to get him out of Vancouver.

It's actually a brilliant deal for the Warriors too; they owed Saskatoon a 2008 4th round pick to complete the Brett Ward deal from earlier this season, and they didn't have one. The terms of that trade stipulated that if Moose Jaw did not have a 2008 4th round pick to give the Blades, then the Blades got Moose Jaw's 2009 3rd round instead. (So the Warriors will now give the Blades one of their newly-acquired 4th round picks and complete the Ward trade). But they were going to lose that 2009 3rd either way, and this way they also basically got to trade a 2009 5th for a second 2008 4th, which is a good deal for the Jaw.

The last bantam showcase of the year, the Alberta Cup, wrapped up yesterday, so the bantam season is now officially over and many WHL scouting teams will now spend the next three days tweaking their player rankings to come up with their teams' final draft lists before the draft on Thursday. I did not see any of the Alberta Cup (which pitted 160 of the best Alberta '93s against each other in an 8-team tournament), but from what I hear (and the stats), Edmonton South Side Athletic Club forward Mark McNeill was extremely impressive at the showcase, recording 9 goals and 12 points in 5 games against the best players Alberta has to offer in his age group. Don't be surprised if McNeill has just made himself a legit candidate for #1 overall....I think he was in the #5 to #10 range on a lot of lists before, but he outshone others like Rattie, Siemens, Topping, etc at Alberta Cup.