Friday notes

A short while back, I took a shot at the Prince George Cougars for their habit of issuing ridiculously short press releases - basically a statement of a fact, with no accompanying information for anyone reading.

Well, the Cougars have some company in this category now. The Kamloops Blazers have relieved assistant coach Andrew Milne of his duties, and this is the release they issued to announce it: "Andrew Milne has left the Kamloops Blazers effective immediately. No further comment will be made at this time."

More news.....Red Deer has acquired 17 year old prospect goaltender Darcy Kuemper from Spokane for a conditional 2009 7th round bantam pick. The pick is conditional, which means whether Spokane gets anything probably hinges on whether Kuemper makes Red Deer's roster before then.

A curious move on Red Deer's part IMO.....they already have two goalies on their roster and last month they picked up 18 year old David Aime from Prince Albert in a trade for defenceman Zac Stebner. They must be setting up for a trade of starter James Reimer to a contender.

The Blades made two roster moves yesterday as well, assigning 18 year old defenceman Colton MacPherson to Junior A, and adding 16 year old defenceman Mitch Berg from midget. Berg was the Blades' 2006 1st round bantam pick but didn't make the team out of training camp. Sounds like he is there to stay now though.

A WHL record will be set tonight for the most games on a single day. Every team in the league is in action tonight for the first time this season, which will set a WHL record with 11 games today. I believe 11 games in one day will happen twice more this year, but not again until March 8th and 15th.

In the B-pool World Juniors, Germany (P.A.'s Max Brandl) and Austria (Spokane's Stefan Ulmer) will meet in their final game tomorrow, with promotion to the A-pool on the line for the winner. Germany lit up Ukraine 11-1 last night; Brandl had one assist in the game.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is now 0-4 and have been outscored 25-8. They must now beat Poland and have Lithuania lose to Norway in order to avoid joining the ranks of the 3rd-rate hockey countries next year in the C-pool.

In the other B-pool, the Hitmen's Bostjan Golicic had a goal as Slovenia beat Latvia 3-2 yesterday. Slovenia is now 2-0 along with Belarus, which means the game between those two teams tomorrow could well decide the pool winner and who gets promoted to the A-pool next year.