Friday notes

Some big news today out of Regina - the Pats are losing their head coach. Curtis Hunt is apparently headed for Ottawa, where he'll be an assistant coach on the staff of new Senators bench boss Craig Hartsburg.

There's never a good time to lose your head coach unexpectedly but in this case, at least it's early July still and the Pats have six weeks to get a new man in and give him time to get set up before training camp starts in late August.

In other WHL news, the Evan Pighin saga takes another turn as the Chilliwack Bruins say he's not free to go to the BCHL's Victoria Grizzlies since he has a contract in the WHL, and they don't plan to release him to play Junior A. They're also more than a little bit peeved about the way the situation was handled, since neither Pighin nor the Grizzlies ever contacted the Bruins to discuss the situation. For his part, Pighin says he really, really wants to step down to Jr A and play in Victoria this year, and is hopeful things can be worked out. You can read more in Chilliwack beat writer Marc Weber's blog.

My take.....the Bruins can say what they like about not releasing Pighin to the BCHL but the bottom line is if he refuses to report to Chilliwack, then he's not going to play there anyway. And surely the Bruins aren't going to make Pighin sit out his last year of junior hockey over a dispute like this. Yes, it's a loss to the team but this is a player who started last year in the BCHL too and who cost the Bruins nothing to acquire in midseason last year. It's a tough break but sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Moving on, some of you might remember last November the Edmonton Oil Kings had a promotion in which they changed their team name to the Edmonton Rodeo Kings for one night, in honor of the Canadian Finals Rodeo which is held in Edmonton every year. The face of the promotion was Oil Kings defenceman Matt Swaby, who takes part in rodeo in his spare time.

Well, Swaby's WHL career is over but his rodeo career is just getting underway, and apparently he is competing this week at one of the biggest rodeos on the calendar, the Calgary Stampede. I'm not sure if he is scheduled to have another ride before the Stampede wraps up, but if so, you can find the Stampede rodeo results here.

Thanks to Gregg Drinnan's blog for pointing out the Swaby/Stampede story. I live right in Calgary but somehow managed to miss it. It must be summer.....