The Portland Winterhawks are looking a lot better this morning than they did a week ago after getting three significant signatures on WHL education deals. The new additions are 19 year old forward Spencer Bennett, 18 year old defenceman Taylor Aronson, and 16 year old forward Seth Swenson. All three players have chosen the WHL over the NCAA - Bennett leaves behind a scholarship to Alaska-Anchorage to join the Hawks, while Aronson, a Hawks listee out of California, was a first round pick in the recent USHL draft by the Tri-City (Nebraska) Storm. Swenson was a Portland 10th round bantam pick in 2008 but he is from Colorado and would have been a much higher pick if his WHL intentions were clear at the 2008 draft table.
Bennett was a 5th round pick of the Calgary Flames in last month's NHL draft, and he said after the draft that he would take the path the Flames felt was best for his development. Looks like they told him to go the WHL route instead of north to Alaska. Both Bennett and Aronson should make an immediate impact on the Hawks this season. Swenson's only 16 so his impact will likely not be as great this year (and he has to make the team first, never a sure thing for most 16 year olds) but that's a good move for a couple years down the road for them.
WHL training camps are only about six weeks away from opening up, and the Swift Current Broncos still don't have a coach or a GM after Dean Chynoweth quit almost a month ago. The Calgary Hitmen need a coach as well, but at least they still have a GM so the preparations for camp and the new season are probably unaffected there. Swift really needs to get a GM in place though so that he can hire a coach (unless it's one man doing both jobs of course) and they can start getting plans made for the new season. Latest rumour is that the new coach there will be former Swift Current native and former WHLer/NHLer Mark Lamb. No word on whether Lamb is also going to be the GM, but you'd have to think so since it seems funny to be hiring a coach without having a GM in place otherwise.
Speaking of camps, I was reading this article about the L.A. Kings summer prospect camp and I noticed at the bottom that Kings GM Dean Lombardi made a reference to the Pats' Colten Teubert getting a long look for the team this year because he is ready and has finished his time in junior. When I read that, my first thought was that Lombardi is mistaken, because Teubert is a 1990 and thus has one more year of junior eligibility left. He's still in that play-in-the-NHL-or-go-back-to-junior group.
But then I thought about it some more, and I remembered that Teubert played a whole bunch of games for the Pats when he was 15. Fourteen regular season and six playoff games, to be exact. And there is an exception to that NHL-or-juniors rule: if a player has played four seasons of junior, he can be sent to the AHL even if he has junior eligibility remaining. This almost never happens because it requires the player to have played major junior at 15, which does not happen. Not full-time, anyway. John Tavares in the OHL would be a notable case there - he played a whole year in the OHL at 15 (via special exemption) and thus he has completed four years in the OHL and so the New York Islanders can send him to the AHL this year if they like. They won't, but they can. So, do Lombardi's comments mean that the Kings are going to try to claim that Teubert's 20 games with the Pats as a 15 year old in 2005-06 constitute a season? If they are successful with that argument, then they can put Teubert in the AHL. Or did Lombardi just err when he said Teubert's time in junior was over? If you're a Pats fan, you might have to sweat it out for a couple months to find out.
And one last note, a comment on the David Musil situation. Jeff Hollick broke the story of the secret draft and subsequent trade of Musil's rights to Vancouver last Friday at 6am on his blog, which surely means that the draft and trade took place on at least Thursday last week, if not God knows how much earlier. So why has there still not been one peep about this on the WHL site, the Kootenay Ice site, the Vancouver Giants site, or anywhere else? Why is the WHL conducting important business like the dispersal & trade of the rights to a potential top NHL draft pick in such apparent secrecy? This kind of B.S. costs the league credibility with fans, so get the news out there already. Shout it from the rooftops.
So....how much other league business which affects the on-ice product we fans pay for goes on in such secrecy that the fans never even find out about it? How much of what the league tells fans is true anyway?
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