Tuesday stuff

The WHL has made its' decision on Tri-City forward Brendan Shinnimin, and the verdict is a 12 game suspension for his dirty hit on Saskatoon's Josh Nicholls. Personally I think the league got it right, this is just about the right length of time IMO. Hopefully this signals a move by the WHL towards longer suspensions for the cheapest, dirtiest plays.

Now, catching up on what has happened over the (Canadian anyway) long weekend....

Regina and Swift Current made two trades on Friday that worked out to actually be one trade: first the Pats traded 19 year old forward Killian Hutt to the Broncos for a 6th round bantam pick. Hours later, the Pats sent that pick back to the Broncos for 18 year old import forward Juraj Roznik. So essentially it was Hutt for Roznik, done as two trades for the same draft pick.

The reason for the two trades? The Pats already had two imports and couldn't acquire Roznik until they moved one out, which they did by sending 19 year old forward Hampus Gustafsson to Brandon for a 2013 6th round pick. This deal happened between the Hutt deal and the Roznik deal and allowed the Roznik deal to take place.

Few more moves were made in the overage department, including two by Brandon. First the Wheat Kings traded overage defenceman Mark Schneider to Regina for 18 year old forward Dominik Favreau, and then the Wheat Kings got down to their final three overagers by waiving goaltender Jake DeSerres.

The acquisition of Schneider by Regina gets the Pats up to three overagers and means the only team in the league not at 3 (or more) right now is Kamloops.

As for DeSerres, he was picked up later in the day by the Saint John Sea Dogs of the QMJHL. Not a bad arrangement for DeSerres since Saint John is one of the better teams in that league and he'll get a chance to take another team to the Memorial Cup. It just shows the depth of overagers in the WHL this year though, that a goalie of DeSerres' abilities cannot stick in the WHL. He is better than the goaltenders some WHL teams have right now....just not significantly better enough to make anyone want to also sacrifice one of their other overagers in return.

Two other overagers were released over the weekend as well - Prince George waived goaltender Morgan Clark, and Calgary waived defenceman Kyle Aschim. The Hitmen could have waited with Aschim since he is still rehabbing a shoulder injury and doesn't count against their overager limit until he is ready to play, but he clearly wasn't going to be in their top three and probably doesn't have any trade value in this overage market, so no point in waiting any longer I guess.

Also, overage forward Neal Prokop has rejoined the Tri-City Americans as he rehabs a broken leg he suffered last season. This gives the Ams five overagers now, although Prokop does not count until he's ready to play of course.

Two other veterans reassigned over the weekend too - Everett's D. Jay McGrath and Regina's Tyler Borstmayer, both of them headed to the Saskatchewan Junior A ranks. Not sure if this is the end for McGrath with Everett, but I think Borstmayer may have a chance to get back with the Pats next season if he gets some playing time this year in Jr A.

And lastly, I have to concede that there might not be any season predictions coming from me this year....there is just so much going on for me right now that I barely have time to update the blog at all, let alone time to write any kind of serious predictions. And the longer I wait, the less point there is in doing it at all, right....so I guess I could just do a quick first-to-last order prediction for each division, with no writeups, or I could just do nothing at all.