Thursday thoughts

Today is overage deadline day, which means that by the end of the day, Brandon, Kelowna and Saskatoon will have had to trade or release one, one and two overagers, respectively. Everett also has too many but they have David Reekie on the 60-day injured list so they'll get some more time before having to make a decision.

Biggest news of the day in the WHL yesterday was probably that the league has approved the sale of the Kamloops Blazers to a group headed by Vancouver businessman Tom Gagliardi and also including a whack of NHLers, all former Blazers who want to "return the team to its glory years", or some such PR quote. They can start doing that today now, and they have not given Dean Clark a vote of confidence as coach/GM so Clark better hope the team starts playing better than they have so far this year.

Couple more moves in the WHL yesterday; the Raiders have reassigned two 18 year olds to Jr A, defenceman Colin Scherger and goaltender David Aime. Aime was last year's backup but lost his job this year to rookie Steven Stanford and overager Dustin Butler. The move means that neither of the two goalies that the Raiders started 06-07 with - Aime and Tyler Esau - are in the WHL anymore. And in another twist on that, Scherger is the player they got from Seattle when they traded Esau last year.

The other move yesterday was Red Deer releasing forward Tyler Halladay.

The Pats' snipers got a close-up look at some snipers of a different sort yesterday when they spent the afternoon with some members of the Regina Police SWAT team. One of the SWAT instructors was former WHLer Darren McKechnie, and the visit was set up by Pats assistant coach (and Regina police officer) Todd Strueby. If I'm not mistaken, Pats forward Matt Strueby is Todd's son too.

I always like to see stories like this. Blades coach Lorne Molleken and a bunch of the Blades players will shave their heads at centre ice in a fundraiser for breast cancer research after tomorrow night's game against Red Deer.

More WHL news later, as the overage moves are made.

And it's not WHL, but the NHL has another head-shot-slash-intent-to-injure PR problem on its hands this morning.....the Flyers' Jesse Boulerice is in trouble after cross-checking Ryan Kesler of the Canucks in the head last night. You can see the YouTube video here. It looks to me like he actually broke that composite stick in half over Kesler's face. Expect to see Boulerice get a double-digit suspension and for the Flyers to be a better team while he's gone. Actually, expect Boulerice to return to the minors where he belongs after the suspension, since he got zero support from his teammates and coaches after the game. Boulerice is a talentless meathead and what's worse, this isn't the first time he has taken a stick to somebody's head; some of you might remember back to an OHL incident in 1998 when Boulerice was charged with aggravated assault after clubbing Guelph forward Andrew Long to the ice from behind with his stick. He was suspended one full year by the OHL for that incident; hopefully that is something the NHL will take into consideration here but their past practice is to ignore incidents that didn't happen in their jurisdiction, unfortunately.