Little bit behind the times on a few player moves that were made over the weekend but which I haven't had a chance to mention until now, so it's probably old news to most readers....
Prince George dealt defenceman Chris Vanduynhoven to Chilliwack for a 4th round draft pick. This deal comes a day after Chilliwack dealt Cam Stevens to Lethbridge, citing the lack of playing time available for Stevens in the 'wack. So, if there wasn't enough playing time for Stevens, how is there enough for Vanduynhoven?
The Cougars also released forward Matt Sokol. This move was announced through the most detailed press release in sports history. Seriously.....Cougars press releases are always like that. Would it kill them to be less wordy on these things?
And thirdly, the much-travelled defenceman Todd Panchyson's career will have at least one more stop, as Seattle released him on the weekend. In the last two and a half seasons, Panchyson has played for Kootenay, Saskatoon, Lethbridge, Portland, and Seattle in the WHL, plus Nipawin in the SJHL. I would think that for now he is probably headed back to Nipawin but maybe somebody in the WHL is looking for a veteran 6th/7th defenceman, a depth guy who won't hurt you in that role?
Here's something you won't see from most teams, but which the Americans are pretty good about making available on their site: the contents of their protected player list. That's a list of 27 of their prospects and how they're doing this year.....if you add the current team roster to that, you've pretty much got their full 50 player list. It's good to see a team making this kind of info available to their fans who want to follow their teams' prospects - and the Ams have been listing their prospects on their site for a long time.
I wish more teams would do this and quit acting like the PPLs are the crown jewels that need to be such closely guarded secrets. Every team in the league knows who is on every other team's list so there is no proprietary information that they are protecting from their opponents here. The official party line, as best as I've ever heard it, is that they keep the PPLs secret from fans in order to keep the pressure off the young prospects. But this is a load of BS....the league publicizes the bantam drafts each year, and most kids on the PPLs come from the bantam drafts, so their names are already known to fans. The only ones being "protected" then are the ones who are listed outside of the draft. So are the drafted kids less in need of "protecting" from fan scrutiny than the undrafted listees? So, there is no good reason not to be sharing this information for the serious fans who want to follow their teams' prospects. Good on the Americans for sharing theirs.
While we're on the topic of PPLs, Portland has a new overseer for theirs. They have hired Matt Bardsley as their new director of player personnel. Bardsley is a longtime scout for the team, and replaces Gord Loiselle, who left the team during the summer.
1 comment:
I think one disadvantage to making the information public is that it then falls under the watchful eyes of hockey parents. Anyone who has dealt with them knows they can be a real handful. If the club tells little Johnny's dad that they are going to list his son and the son's name isn't up on the web site's prospects list that night they freak out and start calling the scout or worse yet the GM. GMs also probably get the calls when the club decides to drop their future Sydney Crosby from the list. Those reasons, and shielding the lists from NCAA scouts, are the biggest reasons I have heard of for keeping them under wraps.
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