Friday notes

Bunch of moves to note yesterday in the league...

Vancouver resolved their 3-goalie logjam by sending 18 year old Derek Tendler to the Swift Current Broncos for a 2011 6th round bantam pick. That leaves the Giants with 19 year old Mark Segal and 17 year old Brendan Jensen as their goalies this year. Tendler's acquisition puts the Broncos into a similar 3-goalie pickle though, as they already had overager Mark Friesen and 17 year old rookie Austin Smith as their goalies. So now what do they do? Friesen's numbers are not very good through his first six starts (1 win, 3.82 GAA, .876 sv%) and there are some good forward and defencemen overage options out there if they want to let go of Friesen and go with a Tendler-Smith goalie tandem. On the other hand, Tendler is on his 3rd team in the last 9 months and is the owner of a career 4.30 GAA and .859 sv% over 13 games, so there's a lot of doubt that he's starting material. That probably means Smith is going down to Jr A and they use a Friesen-Tendler combo. Guess we'll see.

In other goalie news, Saskatoon reassigned 17 year old Adam Iwan, which means they're going with overager Steven Stanford and 19 year old Adam Morrison this year. Should Morrison be signed by the Philadelphia Flyers - who drafted him in the 3rd round in 2009 and gave him a long stay at camp this fall - then the Blades would be looking at having two rookie goaltenders next year. Barring trades of course.

Two overage notes as well, the main one being a trade between Prince George and Everett that sees overage forward Parker Stanfield heading from the Cougars to the Silvertips for a 2012 6th round bantam pick. That move gets the Cougars down to 4 overagers and gets the Silvertips up to the limit of 3. Only Regina and Kamloops still have openings to add an overager now without also having to move one out. Overage deadline is one week from today.

Two other overage notes as Kelowna has waived overage tough guy Tyler Matheson, a move which gets them down to three. I don't think there will be any takers for Matheson, so he is probably headed back to the BCHL to play Junior A. Portland has also released overage forward Liam Darragh, who was trying to get back into the league after previous stints in Chilliwack and Swift Current. Guess that didn't work out and now he is probably headed for the BCHL as well.

And one more deal from Wednesday which I had not mentioned until now; Prince George and Regina swapped 19 year old defencemen in a straight-up deal, the Pats getting Art Bidlevskii and the Cougars getting Cody Carlson. Kind of a deal intended to help both teams address specific needs since the players are quite different - Carlson is a smallish offensive-minded defenceman while Bidlevskii is your tough stay at home type.

One more thing I have to comment on as well; Tri-City forward Brendan Shinnimin has been suspended indefinitely, pending a WHL ruling on his brutal hit from behind on Saskatoon forward Josh Nicholls on Wednesday night. WHL fans with long memories may agree with me that this hit is not very different in appearance from a 1987 hit by Troy Edwards of the Warriors on Brad Hornung of the Pats - forward going to the net, gets a shove from the defender, flies headfirst into the boards behind the net. Except that Nicholls will be OK, while we all know the outcome of the Hornung hit. That is how close many of these serious hits from behind are to becoming tragedies.

I don't think there was any intent to injure on Shinnimin's part; you'd like to think that there is very little actual "intent to injure" anywhere in hockey. But what it was, was reckless and careless and there is far too much of that in the game today, and it's not getting better.

If this were the OHL, based on the punishments they have handed down for serious cheap shots over the last few years, I think Shinnimin would be looking at a suspension in the 10-20 game range for that hit. The WHL, unfortunately, hasn't taken that hard line yet (how long will we have to wait for that to start, I wonder) and so I suspect that what they give Shinnimin will probably be around 5 games, maybe 6 or 7. I would be very surprised if he got more, and not surprised at all (sadly) if he got less. The WHL really needs to start lowering the boom on these reckless plays before somebody else gets seriously hurt....because the players are not getting the message right now.