Friday notes

News and notes from around the league before the long weekend here....

The WHL exhibition season kicks off this morning with the start of the six-team Everett tournament. All six teams - Chilliwack, Everett, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, and Tri-City - are taking part in games there today. And in another WHL exhibition game tonight, Vancouver takes on Kamloops in Ladner, B.C.

With the Americans, #1 goalie Chet Pickard is leading the younger players by example.

We have the first trade in a little while, as last night Prince George traded 18 year old goalie Alex Wright to Spokane for a conditional 2009 bantam pick. I guess the Chiefs, who only had two goalies left in their camp, just got somebody to push James Reid for the backup job. Meanwhile, the Cougars have two veteran goalies returning so there probably wasn't a job for Wright there.

Lethbridge gets their camp underway today and the Lethbridge paper has a pair of articles previewing things there. Those articles are here and here. One thing those articles do not mention (but which I got from Gregg Drinnan's blog) is that overage goalie Michael Maniago has decided to retire rather than come to camp and compete for the backup spot to Juha Metsola. Maniago will apparently start school in Calgary instead.

Hitmen camp is underway as well, and overage goalie Dan Spence knows what he's up against in his bid to keep his starter's job on a team with a glut of overagers and a younger goalie who might be ready for the job. And one of the top prospects to make the Hitmen at forward is 16 year old Cody Beach, the younger brother of Everett pest Kyle, and apparently younger brother is cut from the same cloth as bigger brother. So it shouldn't take very long for fans in the Central division to loath Cody the way U.S. division fans loath Kyle.

Central Division fans might be doing a lot of loathing this year if Tigers forward Wacey Hamilton has his way. Hamilton wants to take his agitation game to the near-legendary levels achieved by former Tiger pest Derek Dorsett.

Regina Pats prospect Spencer Braaten has made up his mind, and it's not in the Pats' favor. Braaten left the Pats yesterday rather than play exhibition games with no guarantee of a job. Playing games would have cost him his NCAA eligibility and he wasn't prepared to do that.

Still with the Pats, defenceman Colten Teubert signed with the NHL's Los Angeles Kings yesterday. Teubert was L.A.'s first round pick this June; he probably isn't ready for the NHL just yet but if he were to stick with the Kings, that would be a huge blow to the Pats' back end. And another Pats story, overage Scott Doucet is looking for a bigger role this year.

The Giants say they could carry as many as five 16 year olds this year. They still have eight left in camp and all are looking good, apparently. One of those players is J.T. Barnett, who is very familiar with some of the game's greatest players of the last 25 years. Why? Because he's the son of former NHL G.M. and player agent Michael Barnett.

Another team looking at playing a lot of 16 year olds this year is Edmonton, who still have 11 of them in camp including phenom Mark Pysyk. Another Oil Kings note from that article - their overage total has decreased by one with the decision by J.P. Szaszkiewicz to retire from the WHL in favour of playing for the University of Alberta.

Red Deer's new Finnish import is feeling right at home with the Rebels, even if his English prevents him from deciding what kind of player he is.

Kelowna's Shane McColgan is 15-going-on-18, according to Bruce Hamilton. With him committing to the Rockets, I believe the Rockets are now 1-for-3 in getting American first-round bantam picks to play for them.

The answer to the question of which city gets to host the medal games for the 2012 World Juniors in Calgary & Edmonton has been answered: Calgary will. Edmonton will host the round-robin games for Team Canada and Calgary will get the medal round games as well as the round-robin games for the pool Canada isn't in.

One of the biggest, longest-running, and best bantam tournaments in Canada is no more. The Kamloops International Bantam Ice Hockey Tournament (KIBHT) is shutting down after 40 years due to problems securing ice from the city of Kamloops. I'm sure there are a lot of disappointed WHL scouts this morning hearing that news, as that tournament was a great place to scout many of the best prospects for the bantam draft a few weeks later.

One last note, the blog might not get updated over the weekend as I have some family committments as well as trying to get out to Hitmen camp....I'll update it if/when I can though.