Tuesday notes

My prediction of Lethbridge shoring up their blueline with a trade for Ty Wishart blew up quickly, but it looks like the Hurricanes may now be able to go after a quality overage d-man. Overage forward Luke Wiens may be out for the season now after injuring his shoulder last week, which means that the Canes may opt to release Wiens and acquire somebody else to fill his overage spot. Overage defencemen who may be on the market include Bretton Stamler and Matt Swaby (Edmonton), Nick Holden (Chilliwack), Mark Louis (Red Deer), Jeff May and Ryan White (Prince Albert), John Flatters (Saskatoon), and Mike Gauthier (Kamloops).

Lethbridge G.M. Ray Stasiuk does say (in the linked article) that he feels he needs to address the team's blueline situation, so we should probably expect at least one more deal from him before the deadline. In fact, he said he'd like to get his trades done by today.

The Kelowna Rockets may be in the same situation with injured overage forward James McEwen. He is recovering from a severed tendon in his arm and will be out at least another eight to ten weeks. That puts the timeline for his return at around early to mid March - right before the playoffs basically. So, the Rockets need to make a decision this week on whether to take the chance that McEwen will indeed be ready to play, or whether they should release him and pick up another 20 year old this week. Tough, tough call.....on the one hand, he's their captain and you don't want to end a kid's junior career prematurely like that if you don't have to. But on the other hand, if he doesn't recover on schedule (and cut tendons are tricky things to 100% recover from sometimes), he might not be able to play again this year anyway - in which case the team would be hurt by having to play with just two overagers the rest of the season and playoffs when they could have had three.

Anyway, we should look for a couple more deals today for sure....there's the Lethbridge thing I mentioned above, and supposedly Robin Figren is on his way to Regina once he approves a deal which will see the Oil Kings get a prospect and a mid-round draft pick from the Pats. Figren returned to Edmonton from the World Juniors late last night, so presumably the team will run the trade past him this morning. The team has scheduled time at 10:00am this morning for media to talk to Figren about the World Juniors but maybe that will turn into a photo op of him cleaning out his Oil Kings locker.