Friday notes

Kind of a slow news day today from the looks of it....

Here's a cool story on Rockets goalie Kris Westblom. In the famous words of Reggie Dunlop, "they brought their ^&$%@*# toys with them!". I think Westblom deserves credit for even being willing to publicly admit that he collects toys, considering the amount of grief he will get from teammates (and possibly opponents too) for doing so.

And a profile on Spokane defenceman Jared Cowen, from the Saskatoon paper since the Blades are in Spokane tonight to play the Chiefs. It would be nice to see some more coverage of the U.S. teams in their local papers, beyond the standard day-after game stories. I realize high school co-ed backgammon ranks higher in the eyes of sports editors south of the 49th, but the true lack of coverage never really hit me until I started trying to find links for posting on this blog this year. The Everett Herald does a good job of covering their team, while the Spokane and Tri-City papers are OK but well below the level any of the Canadian teams get. Portland and Seattle are almost completely ignored by the media in their markets.

Back to the Blades trip for a second, p-b-p guy Les Lazaruk tells the tale of the Blades road trip in his blog. Hopefully Les is able to continue updating it regularily throughout the U.S. division jaunt.

The Oil Kings have a nice promotion for tonight's inaugural Battle Of Alberta against the Hitmen. Families can bring their packed suitcases to the rink and enter a contest which will see the winning family sent to Calgary right after the game. Besides the fact that everyone in Edmonton loves to visit Calgary, the winners also get tickets to the Flames-Oilers game tomorrow night at the Saddledome, plus accomodations in Calgary. A thought here - if the Oil Kings don't start playing better defensively than they did last weekend against Swift Current and Medicine Hat, it might be their goaltenders who need the vacation after this weekend.

The AHL seems to be following the NHL's lead in issuing tougher suspensions for hits to the head. Former WHL nutjob Dale Purinton has just been hit with a 25 game suspension for sucker-punching an unsuspecting opponent earlier this week.