Friday notes

Camps are underway for every team now and in fact most teams are already down to 30-some players. Often that number includes a couple 15 year olds - who you know will go home in the next few days since they can't play this year - and maybe a few too many overagers as well (which has to be dealt with by October 10), so if you take those two groups out, for a lot of teams they are probably within 10 cuts of their final roster and maybe even within 5 cuts.

Of course, those are the toughest 5-10 cuts since there often isn't a big difference between the kids who get to stay and begin their WHL careers and the kids who have to try again next year or perhaps give up on the WHL dream.

Preseason helps teams make those cuts - and while the first two preseason games were played earlier this week, the exhibition season really gets hopping this weekend. Between tonight and Monday, there will be 19 preseason games played, featuring 19 of the league's 22 teams. Only Brandon, Kootenay, and Lethbridge don't play this weekend, probably because all three of them started their camps a little later than everyone else.

Two of the league's three preseason tournaments take place this weekend as well - the five team (Everett, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Tri-City) tournament in Everett and the six team (Calgary, Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Prince George, Red Deer, Swift Current) tournament in Edmonton.

And speaking of preseason and tournaments, there are a number of NHL rookie tournaments which get going in a week or so (all the tournaments seem to run in September 9 - 14 area) which will see dozens of players from the WHL clubs head out for tryouts. Within a day or two after that, the NHL training camps will open and dozens more WHLers will head out to those camps. The vast majority of them will eventually return to the WHL before the first week of October of course, but in their absence that means more ice time in preseason (and perhaps early regular season) games for the young players trying to make the WHL.

No matter what team you cheer for, it's going to be a busy next few weeks here for WHL fans.....