Thursday thoughts

Bunch of stuff today....

The Hitmen won 4-3 last night in Brandon to take a 3-1 lead over the Wheat Kings in their WHL semi-final. Calgary swept both games in Brandon, which I'm sure is a big surprise to a lot of observers after watching games 1 & 2 - and moreso since Calgary won both games in Brandon without the services of one of their top forwards, Tyler Shattock. I know I picked Brandon to win the series in six games so obviously I already got this one wrong and right now you'd have to think it looks pretty good for Calgary to take the series. It's worth remembering though that in 2004-05 another Hitmen team (one featuring names like Getzlaf, Ladd, Schultz, and Pogge) had a 3-1 series lead on Brandon too and blew it to lose in seven.

After watching all four games so far, what seems apparent to me is that Brandon is the more talented team overall. Their forward group is far deeper than Calgary and they have a couple defencemen who support those forwards really well too. When the Wheat Kings are flying, they are dominating these games for stretches. But I haven't seen Brandon play a full 60 minutes yet, and when Brandon is "on", Calgary is also doing a good job of weathering the storm and minimizing the damage. Then when Brandon takes their foot off the gas for a while, as they do in every game, Calgary is capitalizing on their chances.

To me, it seems simple for the Wheat Kings: play hard for 60 minutes and you'll probably win. But now, down 3-1, I have to wonder how many guys on a team that hasn't played hard for 60 minutes yet now want to do it for three straight games, then play another series after this - when they already have a free pass into the biggest tournament of all and could use three weeks to rest and heal. We'll see what happens in game five tomorrow if Calgary gets a lead.

To other things.....Vancouver & Tri-City play their game 4 tonight in Vancouver, and the game will be shown live on Rogers Sportsnet in Canada if you're able to watch. The Americans need to win this game to avoid going down into the same 3-1 hole that Brandon is in.

At the World U-18 championships, Canada whipped Latvia 5-1 yesterday and then beat Slovakia 4-2 this morning, so the Canadian team finishes the tournament in 7th place and avoids relegation.

At the Telus Cup, Notre Dame tied the Atlantic region entry, the St. John's Fog Devils, 3-3 yesterday to remain part of a 3-way tie for first place. All three teams have 1-0-2 records, which means some interesting tiebreakers might be coming into play to determine the order of the top four.

Red Deer stayed alive with a win yesterday over the host Levis Commandeurs, but the Rebels are losing this morning to Collège Antoine-Girouard - it's 4-1 midway through the third period as I write this. A loss won't eliminate them - yet - but it will mean they'll need a lot of help to get 4th place.

Moose Jaw's new rink is slowly taking shape, according to this story (with pictures of the facility in progress). The steelwork and concrete are almost done and the roof is going on. Construction is said to be on budget but slightly behind schedule - although I have no idea if that means that having the building ready for the start of the 2011-12 WHL season is in jeopardy.

Lastly today, the WHL bantam draft goes one week from today, so teams are no doubt getting down to the final tweaking of their scouting lists. The last pre-draft talent evaluation opportunity, the Alberta Cup, goes this coming weekend in Leduc for all the top prospects from Alberta.

I'll have a little bit more on the bantam draft a little bit later today....