Wednesday news

Canada shellacked the Russians 8-1 last night in Winnipeg. The win moves Canada to 5-0 in the tournament and since there's only 8 games to be played, ensures Canada will be the winner in the end. Great. Can we call it off now and forget the last three games? Nobody cares anymore.....certainly the Russian players don't care, as evidenced by last night's game.

The organizers of this tournament have to be thrilled that most of the tickets for the games coming up in Saskatoon (tonight), Red Deer (Friday), and Vancouver (Saturday) were sold already before the tournament even began. Because seriously, who would be rushing out to buy tickets to this thing today, knowing what they know now about the level of competitiveness between the two teams? I understand tickets to the Red Deer game cost $75 each and they sold the building out. At this point I don't think I would pay a third of that for a ticket.

What will be the fondest memory of the trip to Russia for many of the Canadian players? No, not the big wins over the Russian team. No, not the visits to famous and historic sights like Red Square or Lenin's tomb. No, it will be the girls. Definitely, the girls. What is the world coming to when 18 year old boys are more interested in girls than museums?

Moving on to WHL news.....Chilliwack signed six of their 2007 draft picks yesterday. So after one training camp they've seen enough of these 15 year olds to be confident that all six of them are going to be WHL players by the time they're 17 or 18? I guess we'll see in three years if they're right but this seems kind of excessive to me. To get six eventual WHL players from one draft is a terrific achievement; but to be sure you've got six players from one draft a year before any of them are eligible to play anyway....????

Are the Rebels going to have problems this year? Are the Hitmen contenders? Well, the two teams met in their first exhibition game last night and the Rebels didn't fare too well. The score was only 2-0 Calgary but it's the shot total that stands out - 47-12 for the Hitmen. The Hitmen used only two forwards (both 17 year olds) who played full-time in the WHL last year and they still got 47 shots. On the positive side for the Rebels, returning goalie Morgan Clark did stop 45 of those 47 shots. With the youthfulness of this year's Rebels team, Clark and battery-mate James Reimer might have a lot of nights like that.

Article from the Lethbridge paper on the Hurricanes' cut-down yesterday. I'm still a bit frustrated that neither the team nor the paper bothers to list the players who are still there. A name here, a name there, but no list anywhere.

Silvertips beat writer Nick Patterson offered up his thoughts today on which of the team's NHL camp-bound prospects are likely to be back. I'm in 100% agreement with him on all the picks, including the reasoning on all of them.

Prince George cuts four players. Their roster is now down to 26.

Rosters are updated (next post down). I got an actual roster for the Tigers, finally. So all I need now is one for the Rockets.