Tonight's the night

WHL semifinals start tonight in both Calgary and Tri-Cities.....I'm looking for two pretty good series here, there's no weaklings left in the playoffs anymore.

Couple notes this morning....

The schedule for the Giants-Americans series has been modified slightly. Game five was originally scheduled to be a 1pm afternoon game in Tri-Cities on Saturday April 24; that has been changed to an evening game the previous night - Friday April 23. In turn, game six, which was originally scheduled to be on Monday April 26 in Vancouver, has been moved up to Sunday April 25 in Vancouver. Game seven (Tuesday April 27) remains unchanged.

I get why the change was made - the April 24 game was originally 1pm because the Tri-Cities arena football team has a game that night at 7pm. But playing the hockey game that day was just a bad idea on a couple fronts - first, 1pm games don't draw very well. People have other things they like to do on Saturday afternoons than sit in an arena for three hours. Second, it's playoffs and so there is no way for the Ams to guarantee an end time to the game, which is probably not acceptable to the arena management. The hockey game could go into three overtimes and then there's a serious impact on the football game. So moving the date is better all around. The downside is that it means the teams have to play game four Thursday in Vancouver and then bus overnight to Tri-Cities for the Friday game. Barring a sweep by either team, of course. 

Personally, I think playoff series should always have a travel day in between games when it's necessary to change cities - except in case where the distance to be traveled is less than a couple hours. But this is the reality of multi-use facilities sometimes....

Second note, the WHL has named its finalists for the Four Broncos Trophy, presented to the WHL's player of the year. They are Vancouver's Craig Cunningham as the Western Conference nominee, and Regina's Jordan Eberle as the Eastern Conference nominee. No offence to Cunningham, who had a great year himself, but if Eberle doesn't win this award AND the CHL Player of the Year award, then something is really wrong.