First, the Prince George Cougars have hired a new coach, and it's former Hitmen/Wheat King/Blazer head man, Dean Clark. Clark has signed a five year contract with the Cougars, so they're hitching their hopes to him long-term.
Clark is only the coach, but he does have G.M. experience from his Blazers days. Does this mean current Cougars G.M. Dallas Thompson needs to look over his shoulder in a year or two if the fortunes of the team have not taken a turn for the better? Or is Thompson just the G.M. for life, seeing as how he's married to the owner's daughter....
Second bit of news, the AHL has approved the move of the Calgary Flames' farm team, the Quad Cities Flames, to Abbotsford, B.C., for next season. This is significant to the WHL since the AHL is now moving into direct competition with the WHL for the first time - the Chilliwack Bruins are only a short hop away from Abbotsford and say they draw 20% of their fans from the Abbotsford area. Do they lose some of those fans now? And the Vancouver Giants are also in the area, although further away and probably less affected.
For WHL fans in the Lower Mainland, the move does represent at least one positive; they will now find it easier to follow the pro careers of some of their past WHL favourites since having a team in the area means greater local media coverage of the AHL, plus of course the opportunity to attend games.
Now we get to see how the other WHL governors react to this move....we know at least one, Giants owner Ron Toigo, was very uncomplimentary towards the Flames/Hitmen for making a decision which could hurt other WHL franchises.
The schedule is out for the WHL final. Games 1 & 2, as previously announced, are in Calgary this Friday & Saturday. The teams then switch to Kelowna for games 3 & 4 on Monday & Wednesday, then come right back to Calgary for a game 5 on Thursday. Game six is Saturday in Kelowna, and game seven is the following Monday in Calgary.
That Wednesday-in-Kelowna, Thursday-in-Calgary combo is a tough one, with the long overnight bus ride involved, unless the league allows the teams to fly. I guess it had to be this way though, since Calgary's building is unavailable next Friday ("Smuckers Stars On Ice"), as well as the 12th (Fleetwood Mac....I thought they were all dead by now).
And one other note, a request for information if anyone has it. I'm trying to get stats ready for the bantam draft on Thursday and I think I have most of what I can get, except for the Alberta AAA bantam league, which hasn't released their year-end stats yet. Since that league is going to produce a sizeable number of the players drafted, missing those stats is significant. I have their leaders from their website, and I've gotten a couple teams from individual team websites, but I'm still missing stats for probably 80% of the players in that league. Anyone have any? My e-mail is on the side there if you do.....
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