News and notes

Bunch of assorted stuff today....

First, Spokane has traded another member of their Memorial Cup winning team. Defenceman Jace Coyle, who was a depth player on the Chiefs last year and saw no action in the postseason, is off to Medicine Hat for a 2009 5th round bantam pick and a 2010 3rd round bantam pick. The likelihood that the Chiefs could return their entire blueline next year made Coyle expendable as the Chiefs probably want to make room on their roster for at least one rookie defender. Plus, a 5th and a 3rd is a pretty good return for Coyle.

The Tigers hold Spokane's 2010 2nd round pick from the Trevor Glass trade, so the Chiefs getting Medicine Hat's 3rd rounder that year comes pretty close to recovering that pick.

Speaking of drafts, I poached this article from a link Gregg Drinnan posted on his blog....check it out. Seems like the OHL is considering withdrawing from the import draft and thus not using any import players in the future. I think this will probably weaken the OHL when it comes to things like the Memorial Cup....whether you like imports or not, and there's a lot of reasons not to like them, the good ones do raise the calibre of our game. Yes, they cost North American kids spots in the league, but they are costing the 23rd or 24th best player on your team's roster his job and when they're able to play in your top 6 forwards or top 4 defencemen, they make your team better for it.

I'm ambivalent about their presence.....use them, don't use them, I don't care. I do think the current system is broken though, with some imports able to manipulate where they end up, which gives some teams (mostly teams with big markets, high profiles, etc) an unfair advantage over poorer teams. If it's not going to be fair across the board then maybe the WHL and QMJHL need to consider withdrawing from using imports as well.

Moving on, Hockey Canada picked the 22 players who are representing Canada at the Ivan Hlinka memorial U-18 tournament in the Czech Republic next week. You can find the roster here and it includes 11 WHLers (goalie Nathan Lieuwen is a WHLer even if they don't list him as one - he played some games for the Ice last year and will compete for their #1 job this year). You can follow the tournament at Hockey Canada's website as well, also using that link and choosing "Schedule/Results" once the tournament starts.

Some teams start training camps just two weeks from now, while others don't get started for three weeks, on the long weekend. If you're a Bronco fan, Jon Keen has a couple good writeups on his blog (link on the left), running down the Bronco roster and who the good prospects for making the team are. Check it out.