Thursday notes

Couple teams pared their rosters by a player each yesterday....Kootenay has sent 16 year old goaltender Nathan Lieuwen to Jr A with the Westside Warriors of the BCHL. Lieuwen made the team out of training camp but suffered a concussion in a single-car accident after his first game of the season and had not been cleared to play again until recently. In the meantime, Thomas Heemskerk had solidified himself (2.16 GAA, .919 sv%) as the team's backup, which means Lieuwen is out of a job. He was the Ice's 2006 1st round bantam pick and should be back to stay next year.

Meanwhile, Vancouver has sent 17 year old defenceman Dillon Scholten to an unspecified team the BCHL. The Giants tidbit is from Steve Ewen's blog, where he also reports that Giants teammates Jon Blum and Spencer Machacek got into a fight at practice yesterday. It was quickly broken up and nobody was hurt; hopefully it was just due to some temporary frustrations and not a sign that the captain (Machacek) and alternate (Blum) don't like each other. It can't be good for a team to have two leaders being at each others throats all the time.

Couple random notes.....anyone who might have questioned the Blazers' firing of Dean Clark and/or the trading of Keaton Ellerby for Brady Calla is probably quiet now. Since the firing/trade, the Blazers are 6-1 (.857); they were 6-9-1-1 (.412) before. They are averaging 3.57 goals for per game and 2.25 goals against per game since the changes; they were at 2.18 goals for and 2.88 goals against before the changes. Meanwhile, Moose Jaw is 1-4-1 (.250) since the trade and were 9-5-3-1 (.611) before it. That means Keaton Ellerby's record this year is 7-13-2 (.386), if you're keeping track of all that.

Second note, the blog might not be updated again after today until next Tuesday. I'm going away for the weekend and may not be able to update it tomorrow or Monday. I'll be in Lethbridge on Saturday and am going to try to take in the Hurricanes-Oil Kings game that night....it has been a while since I saw a game in another rink between two teams I have no stake in, so it should be fun. Funny how the quality of the league's reffing always improves 100% when you're not cheering for either team.....

Getting away from hockey for a minute and moving to the CFL, Winnipeg head coach Doug Berry got in a good candidate for quote of the year yesterday at the coaches' press conference for this weekend's Grey Cup. When asked his position on his players having sex in the days leading up to Sunday's game (somebody ALWAYS asks that question at these championship game pressers just for shits and giggles, don't they?), Berry replied "If it's with themselves".

And another non-hockey note.....I see that a gold medal in 2008 is now worth a $70,000 cheque to Canadian swimmers. I know that many other countries do this already, but to me it just begs the question of whether this is just another reason to induce young athletes to cheat. The vast majority of athletes from every country are nowhere near medal-calibre and never will be, and I know that winning a gold medal already brings a lot of athletes everywhere a treasure chest of cash through endorsements and whatnot - to the point where this extra $70,000 might not be all that much. But do we need to keep adding more and more incentive for the B-level athletes to cheat in order to take those extra tenths or hundredths of a second off their times and become contenders?