Christmas break

The WHL's 10-day Christmas break is here, and so the supply of WHL news has dried up. It will be sure to be a hectic time once play resumes on December 27 though; the trade deadline is January 10th so there will be just two weeks following the break for teams to decide which direction they're going this season and make any roster moves accordingly.

One team that sounds like it might be involved in a few is Kamloops. Reading Gregg Drinnan's column in the Kamloops paper yesterday, he reports that there are rumblings around town that several Blazers players intend to request trades when they return to town after the holidays. All I can say is: from all appearances, a majority of Blazers fans wanted an ownership change. They got it. With that kind of change comes some other changes as the new owners put their stamp on their team. And with all the changes come some unhappy campers....assistant coaches and players alike. And the jury is still out on whether the new owners are as good at running a team as they are at playing the game.

Only other WHL news to report today is that Brandon star Andrew Clark has a broken ankle, suffered on Saturday, and will be out until the end of January. No good time to lose your best player to an injury like this but if it had to happen, this is probably as good a time as any since the first 10 days of his recovery feature no games to miss.

At the B-pool World Juniors, Calgary's Bostjan Golicic and his Slovenian teammates will not be earning promotion to the A-pool next year in Ottawa. Slovenia will finish either 2nd or 3rd in the tournament; their loss to Belarus will prevent them from finishing first. The team earning promotion will be either Belarus or Latvia, who are playing their round-robin meeting this morning. Latvia needs to win in regulation time to win the pool. Any other outcome favours Belarus.

In the other B-pool. the Raiders' Max Brandl and Germany beat the Chiefs' Stefan Ulmer and Austria to win promotion from that pool, so Germany will play in Ottawa next year with Canada, USA, and the other big dogs. Too bad Brandl won't be eligible to play in it next year though due to age.

Overall, the 'dub boys in the B-pools didn't do too badly. Ulmer had two points (1g-1a) and 6 PIM with a +4 in 5 games for Austria. Brandl had 3 points (1g-2a) and 16 PIM with a +4 in 5 games for Germany. And Golicic also had three points (2g-1a) with 18 PIM and an even +/- in 5 games for Slovenia.

With the league on break and the holidays approaching, this blog might not be updated every day for the next little while.....with no WHL news to comment on, I might try to do some stats stuff as well as some prospects stuff but it all depends on how much time I can squeeze in between drinking eggnog and making uncomfortable small talk with great-aunts.

It's going to be crazy starting Boxing Day. World Juniors, WHL, World U-17s, Macs midget tourney, trade deadline.....is there a better time to be a junior hockey fan than right after Christmas? Enjoy your holidays......