Today's the day: late this afternoon the WHL will announce which of three teams: Kelowna, Red Deer, and Saskatoon - has been chosen to host the 2013 Memorial Cup. In time-honored tradition, that team will immediately begin trading their 19 year olds and adding good 17 & 18 year old players in order to ensure they have a top team next year.
OK, maybe the changes won't start quite so soon. But there's no doubt that knowing who is hosting the Memorial Cup changes some teams' approaches to both next season and this current season. Obviously the biggest effect is on the team hosting the Cup, which now has to make every effort to ensure they have a team worthy of being in the tournament when the big date arrives. But it also affects other teams in the league - as a simple example, if you're a team in the opposite conference from the host team, it potentially just got 25% easier to qualify to play in the tournament.
Of course nobody builds a team with "lose in the WHL final to the Memorial Cup hosts and get the back door entry into the Cup" as their goal. But it's a nice consolation prize if you can't win the league title. Something worth pursuing for sure.
For what it's worth, my money is on Red Deer or Saskatoon to win the hosting privileges. Kelowna hosted the Cup just 8 years ago and I think that is far too recent to be awarding them the Cup again - not when there's 10-15 other deserving teams in the league that have not hosted it in that time.
If I had to pick one.....I'd bet on Red Deer getting it.
Also, tomorrow is the league roster deadline and two teams - Lethbridge and Swift Current - are still over the three overager limit and will have to make a move in the next 24+ hours. Saskatoon also has too many overagers but since one of theirs (Darian Dziurzynski) recently returned from the pros, the Blades will get an extension on the deadline, up to two weeks from the date Dziurzynski came back to them.
3 comments:
kelowna hosting twice in less than a decade isn't going to happen.
saskatoon wins if it comes down to money.
red deer wins if it comes down to politics.
i don't know if any of the three teams bidding will be selling off 19's as none of them have a huge glut of 19's on their rosters.
IF i have my numbers right kelowna currently has 3 19's, red deer 4, and saskatoon 3. better to keep these players as they will be your 20's next season.
if red deer wins the right to host, would it make the unthinkable, trading nugent-hopkins, thinkable? if, or when, he is returned this season it will only be after his 9 games, probably not long before he would go to world junior camp and the tournament. then a half a season, or less. he will not be back in the whl next season.
what would nugent-hopkins trade value be this season to a contender? probably in the schenn ballpark established last year.
The Nugent-Hopkins trade idea is interesting, although the Rebels probably don't want a collection of prospects and picks for him if they trade him. They'd probably want 17 & 18 year old 1st & 2nd line players for him and that might not be an attractive trade to a contender this year.
I'm betting they don't trade him even if he comes back. I think they'll try and win this year and hope that the experience from this year will make next year's Memorial Cup host team (assuming they win the bid) that much better.
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