Monday musings

Few things this morning, after the opening weekend of the season....

Anyone surprised with the state of the league after the opening weekend? I'm not sure that two games (one for some teams) is enough to be worth making any kind of comments on at all, but I'm very surprised to see Edmonton beaten as badly as they were by Red Deer. In two games, the Oil Kings were outscored 12-2. I think we all knew Red Deer was going to be improved this year but I thought Edmonton changed coaches for the purpose of giving their team a new direction as well. 12 goals against in two games is not a good start on a  "new direction".

Also, Ryan Howse has five goals in two games, meaning he's on pace for 180 goals this year. There are probably close to 180 skaters in the league who will not score 5 goals in total this season.

Two weeks ago, 17 year old Marc MacKenzie was the toast of the Raiders after bloodying an intruder he caught in his billets' house. Today, MacKenzie is estranged from the Raiders and at home hoping the team will trade him. There are some not-so-flattering things said about Raiders coach/GM Bruno Campese in the article, but there are two sides to every story so let's wait to hear Campese's version of events before we draw any conclusions here.

I suspect there are a number of teams that would be interested in acquiring MacKenzie's services though, so if the Raiders decide to trade him, they will probably have some offers.

NHL roster cutdowns continue and most WHL teams now have all their players back. By my calculations, the only players - who are possible or likely to return in the first place - who are still away are:

• Brayden Schenn, Brandon (at L.A. Kings camp)
• Brayden McNabb, Kootenay (at Buffalo Sabres camp)
• Quinton Howden, Moose Jaw (at Florida Panthers camp)
• Oliver Gabriel, Portland (at Columbus Blue Jackets camp)
• Ryan Johansen, Portland (at Columbus Blue Jackets camp)
• Nino Niederreiter, Portland (at NY Islanders camp)
• Luke Walker, Portland (at Colorado Avalanche camp)
• Adam Morrison, Saskatoon (at Philadelphia Flyers camp)
• Jared Cowen, Spokane (at Ottawa Senators camp)
• Cody Eakin, Swift Current (at Washington Capitals camp)

Of these players, I would think that McNabb, Howden, Gabriel, and Morrison should be back fairly soon. I think Johansen, Cowen, and Eakin get longer looks - maybe into the first few games of the NHL season - but should be back eventually. Schenn I think may be 50/50 to stick with the Kings this year, same with Niederreiter with the Islanders. Luke Walker, he is eligible to go to the minors and has been assigned to the Avalanche's AHL camp already so he is probably at best 50/50 to return to the WHL as well.

Just my guesses at the status of the missing players anyway....

And lastly, there is a new free monthly WHL-focused publication out there, from the website DubNation. Lots of good articles about the league, so if you haven't checked it out yet, you should do so. It's free, after all. 

And another trade

Another trade tonight, this one announced after the early games ended. Vancouver has acquired overage forward Randy McNaught from Saskatoon for a 2011 5th round pick.

McNaught might be the best heavyweight fighter in the WHL - if it's not Josh Caron of the Blazers of course. Those two will get to face each other plenty this season after this deal. Makes you wonder if the presence of Caron just up the road is what prompted Vancouver to make this trade and use a valuable overage spot on a guy who isn't going to contribute a whole lot with the gloves on.

Opening night notes

Few things tonight....first a flurry of trades right before the puck dropped:

Moose Jaw sends 18 year old forward Mike Forsyth to Chilliwack for a conditional draft pick.

Medicine Hat sends 17 year old forward Trent Ouellette to Regina for a conditional 13th round pick in the 2013 bantam draft. A 13th round pick in a draft 3 years from now is about as close to "nothing" as you can get, since teams rarely draft into the 13th round in the first place. On the plus side, at least he wasn't traded for a bus.

And the biggest deal sees Moose Jaw send overage forward Thomas Frazee to their hated rivals just up the road in Regina. This is a complicated deal that involves two draft picks on each side, but the main asset coming back to the Warriors is Regina's 2012 2nd round pick. It's surprising that Moose Jaw would deal within the division like that - and with their biggest rival to boot - but I guess you gotta take the best deal when you're trying to move overagers in a crowded market.

For the Warriors, this gets them down to four overagers and with one of them, Brendan Rowinski, on the injured list for a fair while yet, they can go with the three healthy ones until Rowinski is ready to play. Thomas Heemskerk is the #1 goalie and Spencer Edwards was just named their captain, so the 3rd spot is probably between Rowinski and Dylan Hood. Likely Hood is safe until Rowinski is ready to play, then they'll have to move one of the two.

Now....to the most pressing matter of the night: the WHL website.

To everyone's great surprise, I'm sure, the &*%^#$!@ site did not work properly for the start of the season.

• at the start of the evening the right-side scoreboard was an unusable mess of out-of-place links and icons. They fixed it by the 2nd period of the early games, but this is something that never would have happened in the first place if oh, I don't know, THEY HAD TESTED THIS FEATURE EVEN ONCE, EVER.

• so, we play "guess which 'Game Summary' link to click" and when you guessed right, it took you to a lovely blank page. Again this was fixed within a couple hours but again, this is something that never would have happened in the first place if oh, I don't know, THEY HAD TESTED THIS FEATURE EVEN ONCE, EVER.

• on that lovely otherwise-blank page there were two links, one saying "View Scorer's Sheet" and one saying "Text Box Score". The Text Box Score worked great if you like old newspaper style boxscores. The View Scorers Sheet though, that gave us (and still does at this moment actually) a fatal error in a call to the member function getValue() on line 137 of actions.class.php. Perhaps they'd like us fans to debug it for them, I'm sure we have some smart people out there who'd have fixed it by the end of the first period. Again, this is something that never would have happened in the first place if oh, I don't know, THEY HAD TESTED THIS FEATURE EVEN ONCE, EVER.

The league rolled out a crappy, bug-riddled product two weeks ago and have proceeded to debug it on the fly since then. Yes, they have mostly fixed the problems; but the point is, why did this ever happen in the first place? The WHL isn't some mom and pop operation. They're selling a product and they have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of "customers" for whom this website is a key means of consuming the WHL's product. In that light, the lack of care and attention put into this site is mind-blowing.

They knew there were problems two weeks ago when they launched. Fans complained then, but it really wasn't that big a deal to most since the season hadn't started. But the league and its developers didn't take advantage of that "grace period" to get everything right - once the games started counting, they STILL didn't have everything working, and they've had a couple more weeks now to make sure it did. The league should expect more than this from their developers and the fans should damn sure expect more than this indifferent treatment from the league.

Thursday stuff

Couple things today...

First, the Giants and Oil Kings made a trade yesterday, the Oil Kings sending 19 year old forward Michael Burns to the Giants for the rights to 16 year old forward Landon Robin, who was already assigned back to AAA midget by the Giants earlier this fall.

Usually trades of 19 year olds for 16 year olds are conducted between teams that are loading up for title runs and teams that are stocking the cupboard for the future. So, it looks as though the Giants are serious about being one of the top teams in the league again this year when they're giving up a 16 year old prospect for a 19 year old forward with 10 goals to his career. The return of Craig Cunningham as an overager certainly can't hurt that cause either.

And the other noteworthy bit of news today is that the Pittsburgh Penguins have assigned overage import goaltender Alex Pechurskiy back to the Tri-City Americans. The Ams are now probably in a position where they'll have to trade one of their goaltenders, since it doesn't seem very likely that Pechurskiy and 19 year old Drew Owsley are going to want to split the playing time in net again like they did last season.

The Ams are OK on the import front since Nikita Nesterov has yet to show up, so they only have two imports even with Pechurskiy's return. But Pechurskiy does bump the number of overagers in Americans camp up to four, so somebody's going to have to go before October 15. Moving Pechurskiy solves both the goaltending and overage logjams, but he's also harder to move, as a two-spot player.

Oh, and Anaheim has assigned Emerson Etem back to Medicine Hat. Am I the only one who is a little bit surprised by this move? I thought for sure he would get a longer stay from the Ducks than this. I didn't think he would make the team at 18 but I thought he would stick around until closer to the season at least.

Red #23 explained

Scott Sepich of the Portland Oregonian has finally gotten to the bottom of what happened in the big "red #23" mess in Portland a few weeks back.

Basically, Alessio Bertaggia (#23 himself) is the son of a Swiss coach whom Portland coach/GM Mike Johnston knew, and whom was in Portland for a coaching clinic. The kid asked if he could take part in training camp, and the Hawks said yes after clearing that with the WHL. The catch is, the WHL told the Hawks not to use Bertaggia in any formal, "official" scrimmages in camp.

For whatever reasons, the Hawks did use Bertaggia in an official scrimmage and that's when all heck broke loose of course.

After hearing the explanation, it is 100% believable in my opinion, and it is highly likely that whatever punishment the WHL dished out on the team is sufficient....we don't know what the punishment was of course, but I think we can mostly all agree that this was an unfortunate case of bad judgement and not of any sinister intent here. No extremely severe punishment warranted, in my opinion anyway.

The one remaining question that lingers over the whole incident is, why didn't the Hawks just explain what happened right off the bat? To me, THAT part made the whole situation bigger than it needed to be. The whole story could have been dead and buried two weeks ago already instead of lingering around like this.

In any case, it's dead and buried for me now.

Seattle-Swift deal

Another overager is on the move to Seattle. The Birds have acquired defenceman Travis Bobbee from the Swift Current Broncos in exchange for forward Brendan Silvester (19) and defenceman Tanner Muth (17).

The deal leaves both teams at the overage limit of 3. Presumably this means that Swift Current is going to use Stepan Novotny as a two-spot player, which means bad news for one of their other two imports - forward Juraj Roznik and defenceman Richard Nedomlel - is coming before mid-October.

Wednesday notes

Few things this morning....

We're getting down to the tough cuts for most WHL teams now, and as proof of that, a couple more veterans were sent packing yesterday, this time from Kelowna. The Rockets have cut two veteran forwards, 19 year old Codey Ito and 18 year old Sean Aschim. If they can't work a trade to another WHL team, both players are likely destined for the Saskatchewan Junior A ranks.

These cuts are the toughest ones but I think any time rookies come in and push vets out of a job, that is usually a good thing for a team. Usually rookies have to be clearly better than a vet to win the vet's job, so you know your team is probably improving when you see this stuff happening.

Elsewhere, another vet has left his team and requested a trade. That is in Moose Jaw and the player is 18 year old backup goaltender Brandon Glover. Glover is presumably unhappy about the acquisition of overage goalie Thomas Heemskerk, which probably deprives him of a chance to earn the starters job in Moose Jaw this year.

I have to say though, I'm not sure where Glover is going to get a better opportunity than what he already had in Moose Jaw. Yes, he would have had to be the backup in Moose Jaw again this year. But the starter is overage and would definitely be gone next year, which means the starters job next year would have been all Glover's, as long as he performed well as backup this year of course. He could have been the starter there as a 19 year old and again as a 20 year old potentially. A good portion of Moose Jaw's core is 17 & 18 years old, which means that 2011-12 should at least in theory be an even better team than they'll have this year.

If he wants to be a starter this year, I'm kind of struggling to see a place in the league where he'd be clearly better than their current #1. Guess we'll see.

Tuesday

Few things today....

The WHL and Shaw TV released their 2010-11 TV schedule yesterday. You can see the schedule here. To break it down, the number of times each team is being shown this year:


Calgary: 6
Kelowna: 5
Saskatoon: 5
Vancouver: 5
Edmonton: 4
Brandon: 3
Chilliwack: 3
Kamloops: 3
Medicine Hat: 3
Moose Jaw: 3
Regina: 3
Swift Current: 3
Everett: 2
Kootenay: 2
Lethbridge: 2
Portland: 2
Red Deer: 2
Prince Albert: 1
Prince George: 1
Seattle: 1
Tri-City: 1

You have to give them credit, they are showing a wide variety of teams - Spokane is the only team to not be shown at all. Overall the list is about what you'd expect though, with the higher population centers (higher Shaw customer bases) at the top of the list, and smaller centers getting fewer airings.

Second note, the regular season starts on Friday and the WHL site is still not complete. #1 on the problem list, for me anyway, is that I cannot view the schedule. Three days to season kickoff and fans have no way - on the league's official website - to see who is playing who. 

The stats and standings still do not work either....I know, there are no stats or standings yet. But based on how things have gone so far, I gotta say I'm not optimistic that they're magically going to start working on Friday night. 

Many of the rosters are there now, which is nice....but I'm wondering how Kootenay is going to compete this year with only three players on their roster. Chilliwack, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat are not complete either, and many teams have an awful lot of players wearing number zero. And since the individual team websites seem to be using the same roster database, the rosters on the team sites are not complete and/or wrong as well. Come on, we're 72 hours from the season starting. This joke of a redesign has gone on long enough. Time to get this fixed now, already.

And another trade

Yet another overager on the move today now - Saskatoon has taken the first step towards relieving their glut of 20 year olds by sending forward Travis Toomey to the Seattle Thunderbirds for a 2011 4th round bantam pick.

My first thought is a 4th round pick seems a bit high considering that Toomey was probably well down the depth chart amongst Saskatoon's eight overage candidates, and the fact that Saskatoon isn't really dealing from a position of strength with so many players to move in the next four weeks. But whatever.....Toomey will bring some size and toughness and a few points to the Seattle lineup.

McKenzie column

As most of you know, former NHL coach Pat Burns is battling cancer, a battle that he acknowledged back in April he was going to lose.

This morning some media outlets (apparently spurred by some Twitter postings) reported that Burns had died. TSN's Bob McKenzie soon got a call from Burns to set the record straight, and wrote what turned into a pretty gosh darn nice tribute to Burns in his regular TSN column today. Check it out.

Guess that settles it

My questions about Jeff Bosch from the earlier post have been answered - the Warriors have dealt Bosch to the Kamloops Blazers for a 2011 6th round bantam pick.

Of course that creates more questions though. Bosch isn't going to be the backup goalie in Kamloops so either he's going to split time with incumbent Blazers starter Jon Groenheyde (which means 16 year old Troy Trombley goes back to midget), or it means Groenheyde is now on his way out of Kamloops.

Also, another WHL veteran walked the plank today too, as the Red Deer Rebels released 19 year old forward Steve Oursov. Oursov missed almost all of last season with a severe concussion and now it looks like he's not good enough to play for the Rebels as a 19 year old. I'd guess he's bound for the BCHL.

Curious trade

Interesting trade this morning, as the Everett Silvertips and Moose Jaw Warriors swap some overagers. Going to Moose Jaw is goaltender Thomas Heemskerk, and headed to Everett is defenceman Chad Suer.

Now, the Everett angle of this deal makes sense - they're going with Kent Simpson as their starting goalie this year and thus didn't need Heemskerk anymore. Getting an experienced WHL defenceman like Suer only helps make Simpson's life easier as well. So that part makes sense.

But why does Moose Jaw want Heemskerk? First, it's not even certain that he will return to the WHL from the San Jose Sharks organization. If he doesn't come back, then the Warriors have given away Suer for nothing. But even if he does return, the Warriors already have an overage goalie in Jeff Bosch, who did pretty well for them last year and is (was?) presumably their starter again this year. Obviously they won't keep two overage goalies so if they're keeping Heemskerk then that means the end of the line for Bosch in the Jaw. And the Warriors already had too many overagers (they still have six) so this move doesn't do anything to help them reduce that number.

More moves coming in Moose Jaw, that much seems certain....

Thursday moves

Couple notes this morning...

First, Vancouver has traded disgruntled 18 year old forward Brandon Scholten to the Prince George Cougars for a 2012 fifth round bantam pick. Scholten had declined to report to the Giants training camp and had asked for a trade.

Also, Regina has waived overage forward Cassidy Mappin, a move which probably brings a close to his WHL career. The Pats are now down to just one overager again.

Players are starting to trickle back from NHL rookie camps now, so look for more and more cuts to be made in the next few days.

Current roster breakdowns

Just for fun, a look at how the current training camp rosters break down by age for each team:

	16's	17's	18's	19's	20's
Brandon Wheat Kings	7	8	9	5	6
Calgary Hitmen	3	5	10	8	4
Chilliwack Bruins	6	5	9	4	4
Edmonton Oil Kings	4	9	7	5	3
Everett Silvertips	3	6	8	8	2
Kamloops Blazers	4	6	8	7	1
Kelowna Rockets	4	6	9	7	4
Kootenay Ice	6	7	8	6	4
Lethbridge Hurricanes	8	6	8	7	3
Medicine Hat Tigers	3	8	6	8	4
Moose Jaw Warriors	4	7	8	4	6
Portland Winterhawks	3	3	13	6	5
Prince Albert Raiders	2	7	6	8	3
Prince George Cougars	4	8	9	3	3
Red Deer Rebels	5	7	7	7	5
Regina Pats	3	5	12	8	3
Saskatoon Blades	6	10	5	5	8
Seattle Thunderbirds	2	7	10	6	1
Spokane Chiefs	2	9	8	8	3
Swift Current Broncos	1	9	6	7	4
Tri-City Americans	4	5	9	6	4
Vancouver Giants	3	8	9	5	2

(I left off any remaining 15 year olds as they are ineligible to play full time this season)

You can see that some teams are down to just 1 or 2 16 year olds already, which is certainly good news for the ones they have left on their rosters. There are also some teams with very unbalanced rosters - very deep in some age groups and very weak in others. Those are teams that ordinarily would bear watching for possible trades as they try to shore up weak age groups by moving players from stronger groups.

And the overage situations too....Saskatoon still has eight of them. They may lose some to the NHL yet but they are for sure one of the teams to watch in that trade department.

Monday notes

We are now just 11 days away from the start of the 2010-11 season. Time flies, doesn't it?

A few notes this morning....

If you're interested in following the progress of some WHLers and ex-WHLers at the eight-team Traverse City NHL rookie tournament, the site Red Wings Central has rosters, statistics, and standings.

I've received a few e-mails about the Great CHL Website Boondoggle, and it seems that perhaps the WHL and its teams are not very much to blame for the situation. It sounds like this is all being driven by Forces From Out East, and the WHL and its teams don't have much blame in the matter, except of course for the fact that they agreed to this CHL-wide project in the first place. I can't imagine that they had no choice in THAT decision.

Sounds like the website design is/was being done by a group in Ontario. Regardless of where they are, they are not competent for this job. If I did this kind of crap at MY job, I could probably start looking for work tomorrow.

Speaking of website redesigns, Gregg Drinnan has unveiled a spiffy new look for his blog today - check it out. Perhaps the WHL could hire Gregg to fix their problems.

And lastly, a final comment on the Red #23 situation in Portland. By now everyone has probably heard that it turns out that the mysterious "Red #23" in Portland's camp was actually a 17 year old Swiss player who Portland had no right to have in their camp. The WHL has investigated and has laid down a punishment on the Winterhawks, although the details of that punishment will be kept under wraps for some reason.

Let me say this though: As a fan of the WHL, I'm very disappointed in the Portland organization, and I am certain that I am not alone in that sentiment. Not just the fact that they broke the rules in the first place, but the attempts to cover it up afterwards instead of just owning up to a mistake. Any kind of perception of the league as a place of rule-bending and coverups and secrecy hurts EVERYONE in the league. It comes back to the same theme over and over again: professionalism. If you want to be perceived as professional, act like it. If you want to act bush league, don't be surprised when some people start to regard you that way.

Portland's franchise just came out of a forgettable era of bushleague-ism under its previous owners. I think everyone in the league saw the new start as a chance to erase that stigma, and last season's on-ice turnaround was a good step in that direction. Which is why it is so disappointing to see the new regime pulling this kind of shady crap....lets hope this is the last we have to see of this kind of thing.

New site issues

So....it's 72 hours after the go-live time for the WHL/CHL websites and I see they still don't have everything working properly. Many of the links on the WHL site still lead nowhere or (worse) display errors to users. And for some reason the Calgary Hitmen website has reverted to its old version.

I work in IT....I'm quite familiar with the development, testing, and rollout process. And from what I can see, it seems very clear to me that there was a totally inadequate level of testing done on this project before it was rolled out. 

I think all of us who do this for a living would agree that sometimes you still end up with some bugs even when things are tested properly, and for that reason I didn't want to criticize them right off the bat on Thursday morning. But, that was three days ago; now the season starts in less than two weeks and visitors to the WHL site are still unable to view stats, standings, rosters, or even the flippin' schedule. That is completely unacceptable IMO. So it didn't work when you rolled it out. Fine. So fix it. If you can't fix it in 72 hours I'd have to say you (A) didn't test this anywhere close to enough and maybe even not at all, or (B) aren't trying very damn hard. Half the WHL site hasn't worked since the get-go and NONE of it has been fixed.

Oh - and for the most part, the 22 team sites have all been very good with the switchover. A few bugs, but generally all good. It's only the main WHL site that has the problems. 

Thursday notes

Few notes this morning....

First, the new "CHL Network" of websites was launched last night. New sites are up for all 60 CHL teams, plus the WHL, OHL, QMJHL, and CHL sites as well.

It's 8 am MDT here and half the links on the WHL site's navigation bar do not direct the user anywhere, and asking for the stats or standings gives me a nice code dump:

All 20 team sites seem to be working though, although I did not investigate any of them beyond checking whether a site came up and whether it matched the CHL's template....

And a couple injury notes from yesterday, regarding a couple of the WHL's bigger stars:

Brandon forward Brayden Schenn apparently suffered a knee injury of some sort Tuesday at Brandon's training camp. It is serious enough that the Los Angeles Kings are flying Schenn in to have the Kings' doctors take a look at him. If he's going to miss any significant amount of time, that could put an end to any chance of him sticking with the Kings this season and will likely land him back in the WHL for sure. Without the injury you'd have to figure he has a decent shot at playing in the NHL this year.

And Kelowna defenceman Tyson Barrie has suffered a partially torn hamstring muscle, will be out around six weeks and will definitely have to miss the Colorado Avalanche rookie camp. Depending on how quickly the injury heals, he may be able to attend their main training camp as well but you have to figure this has dealt a blow to any chance he had of making the Avalanche this year as a 19 year old. That probably wasn't a huge chance to begin with but with him being out for a while now, he's not going to be in peak condition even if he is able to make the main camp.

Tuesday notes

Few things this morning...

Interesting trade yesterday as the Saskatoon Blades shipped 18 year old forward Charles Inglis to the Prince George Cougars for a 2011 2nd round bantam pick. Inglis was the 4th overall pick in the 2007 draft but hasn't quite developed into the player the Blades hoped he would be. Coupled with some off-ice issues that finally got him sent home from Blades camp a few days earlier, it looks like he ran Blades G.M. Lorne Molleken out of patience.

This is probably one of those deals where there will be a clear winner and loser apparent in time. Either Inglis is going to clean up his act with a fresh start and become the player he could be (in which case a 2nd round pick for him looks pretty good), or he's going to continue down his current path and make this a trade the Cougars will wish they hadn't made. If P.G. has another poor year this year, that 2nd round pick is going to be awfully close to a first rounder in the draft order.

Still with Prince George, veteran defenceman Kurt Torbohm elected to leave the team yesterday. Torbohm supposedly is undecided on whether to continue his hockey career; in either case his decision drops the Cougars down to the required three overagers, meaning the three that remain are probably safe at this point.

Another veteran was cut yesterday, Seattle releasing 18 year old forward Brennan Tutt. Tutt barely played as a rookie last year before suffering a serious elbow injury that required surgery and ended his season. Not many veterans cut from WHL camps so far this season but as we get closer to the season starting and the tough decisions have to be made, there will be more....

Lastly, the new-look WHL websites are supposed to be unveiled tomorrow. As I understand it, this is going to be a CHL-wide thing, with all team sites from the WHL, OHL, and QMJHL following a common template for a similar look and feel.

Hitmen intrasquad notes

Hitmen intrasquad game went last night as team "White" beat team "Black" 10-7. I was going to type out my own version of the summary (which was likely incorrect anyway) but the Hitmen website has saved me the trouble. Read it here.

Only stat not mentioned in the website summary is that there was one fight, veterans Cody Sylvester and Justin Kirsch squaring off in the 2nd period. Sylvester landed the only punch, a solid right to the side of Kirsch's face that sent Kirsch to his knees and ended the fight. Kind of a needless fight really since neither of those guys is battling for a spot on the team.


Some thoughts on what I saw....

Goaltending:

The backup battle is perhaps getting a little clearer. 16 year old Brodie Burdeny had a game he'd probably rather forget (6 goals on 20 shots in 30 minutes), while 18 year old Matt Hrynkiw played behind the same team and gave up just 1 goal on 14 shots in 30 minutes. I wasn't there on Sunday but I still haven't seen Burdeny have a good game, whereas Hrynkiw has been very good every time I've seen him.

Mack Shields struggled a bit but he's also only 15 and probably facing shooters of this calibre for the first time at this camp. I do like Shields' size though, he's a really big kid who fills the net. If you use your imagination a little (yesterday, a lot) you can picture some physical resemblance to Martin Jones as a 15 year old.

19 year olds Michael Snider and Juraj Holly did not play in the intrasquad. Exhibition games will decide more but I think it's a 3-way battle for two spots, between Snider, Holly, and Hrynkiw.

Defence:

Carter Berg is a lock. This kid can play, a year in Jr A did him well after struggling as a 16 year old with Chilliwack. And I thought Alex Roach looked very good again too, he should be on the team as well. I still don't see much in Justin Slobozian....every time I noticed him it was because he was out of position or fighting the puck. Seems like some other watchers liked him better though. I didn't see much of Keaton Lubin but what I did, he sure does look like a polished player....good pick for a 3rd rounder for sure. Kyle Schmidt continues to be a case of not-quite-enough IMO....I wonder if Schmidt's window of opportunity is closing quickly. I actually kind of liked Eric Baldwin a little bit too but maybe not enough to get a spot on the team.

Right now I'm guesstimating that Berg, Roach, and Lubin make the team in addition to the 5 returning vets.

Forwards:

18 year old Trevor Cheek was probably the best rookie prospect in the game. He has wheels and can really shoot the puck....he's also a signed player so he's a lock for the team. 18 year old John Lawrence should stick with the team for good this time after making it through half a season last year. Corey Scott looked decent but he's also 19 and to make the team at that age he has to be able to play in the top 9 forwards....is he able to do that? I'm not so sure. I also liked 18 year old Brandon Brossoit, he has had some moments too....so did 18 year old Justin Faux. Neil Landry was not as noticeable this time as I thought he was on Saturday. Only problem here is that in a rebuilding year like Calgary is in, you don't want to take too many of these older rookies, you need to give your kids some spots too. So if Cheek and Lawrence are on the team, is there any room left for Scott/Brossoit/Faux/Landry? Maybe one of them?

A trio of the 17 year old prospects - Hartley, Skilliter, and Santini - all were....OK. Maybe not quite enough, and they look like they've been passed by some of the 16 year olds in their development. Probably one of those guys makes the team though. I liked Skilliter the best of the bunch. Joel Schreyer was not bad either, and I liked Presley Kirkness as well, he was one of the few guys who was consistently physical. Probably not enough from either of them to beat out listed prospects though.

For the 16 year olds, Robert Trzonkowski and Chase Clayton had good games and I think they are both locks. I also liked Luke Gordon and Calder Brooks; all four of those 16 year olds were probably better than Hartley/Skilliter/Santini. I don't see them keeping more than 3 or 4 16 year olds total though so with Lubin, Clayton, and Trzonkowski being the leaders in that area, perhaps another year of midget or Jr A will do Gordon and Brooks well.

So, 7 open spots. I've got Cheek, Lawrence, Trzonkowski, and Clayton for sure. Probably one or two of the 18/19 year olds, and one or two of the three 17 year olds, and that's 7.

Red #23 is...

....15 year old Mike Nolan. Well, that's who it is at the Hitmen's camp, anyway. :)

I spent much of today at the first day of the Hitmen's training camp. Roster has been added to the rosters post, for anyone interested. A few notes....

- Ian Schultz and Michael Stone are there and scrimmaged although obviously they'll be leaving soon and not coming back.

- Rigby Burgart and Misha Fisenko did not report, so they're out of the overage picture. Burgart was probably never in that picture (which is probably why he didn't bother coming to camp) but Fisenko would have been a nice option as a two-spotter, seeing as how they only have one import in camp. The other import options, Erik Haula and Dmitri Jaskin, are not there either....no surprises there though.

- Kyle Aschim is there but is not expected to be ready to play until mid-October due to a shoulder injury. So, the Hitmen will be able to keep him around and not count him amongst their overagers until he's ready to play....then they'll have two weeks to settle on three.

- top '94 defencemen prospect Keaton Lubin is also there but also hurt. No idea about his status.

- the two Kalalshnikov brothers on the roster are not imports, despite their Russian names. The family moved to Canada last year, so they count as regular North American players.

- some older free agent players with previous WHL experience are trying out: defenceman Justin Slobozian played 46 games for the Regina Pats over the last three years; forward Brandon Brossoit played a couple games for Lethbridge in 08-09; forward Corey Scott played 78 games for Moose Jaw the last two years; forward Neil Landry has previously been the property of the Kamloops Blazers, and forward Justin Faux was the property of the Prince George Cougars for a couple years. Neither Landry nor Faux have ever played a WHL game though, I don't think.

I am surprised that there are not more older "2nd chance" type players here though. You would think this would be a dream opportunity for 18/19 year olds who were let go from other WHL teams in the past - a quality organization like the Hitmen, with plenty of openings. But perhaps the Hitmen opted not to flood their camp with those kind of players either, in order to give their youngsters a chance.

I saw the first three of the four games today....overall I would have to say that the younger players mostly disappointed me. I did not see a single 15 or 16 year old player who really stood out from the pack. Nobody who made me say, "wow, there's a future WHL star right there". In the past there has always been one or two of those....but I won't worry about it, I'm sure there are some future stars there. They just didn't jump out at us today.

The returning veteran Hitmen players were all good, especially Foucault, Beach, Fiddler, and Schultz up front, and Stone, Wilson, and Mackenzie on the back end. But this is to be expected, isn't it. It's nice to see those players dominating because it gives you a standard to compare the other players to....nobody was close to their standards.

I did like Brossoit, he was the best of the older tryout players. Faux was not bad either, and Landry had a few good moments. Scott didn't do anything and I thought Slobozian looked unmotivated. He got let go from Red Deer's camp earlier this week amid questions about his conditioning, so perhaps it wasn't a lack of motivation as much as a lack of fresh legs.

The goaltending battle....well, Snider and Holly are the best two there, that's for sure. Matt Hrynkiw did look good in the one game I saw him though. Burdeny got lit up bad in his game.

Need to see more of Hrynkiw but right now, I wouldn't rule out the Hitmen going with the two 19 year old goalies.

Thursday thoughts

All team training camps are underway as of today....few things to mention there:

• the goalie battle is over in Kamloops, at least for now. With Taran Kozun leaving camp of his own choice yesterday, the Blazers are down to incumbent Jon Groenheyde and 16 year old Troy Trombley as their goaltenders in camp. 

• the goalie battle is also mostly over in Red Deer, where yesterday's cuts leave the team with only overage incumbents Darcy Kuemper and Kraymer Barnstable, and 16 year old Bolton Pouliot. Since the Rebels are not going to be carrying two overage goalies this year, it looks like Pouliot has won the backup job behind whichever of the overagers the team keeps.

• Swift Current already got down to just two goalies, incumbent Mark Friesen and 17 year old Austin Smith. And the thinking in Prince Albert seems to be that 16 year old Brendan Fiebelkorn is only in camp for the experience, which means that Jamie Tucker and rookie 17 year old Eric Williams are going to be the netminding battery there.

I've updated most of the team rosters (below) recently, so they should mostly be fairly accurate. Still no rosters for Chilliwack, Kelowna, or Portland. None for Brandon, Calgary, Kootenay, or Lethbridge either but they all just started their rookie camps so we'll cut them some slack yet.

Going off a bit here now....one thing that keeps rattling around in my brain is the great "Red #23" mystery from Portland's camp. For those who don't know what that was, it seems there was a player in their camp earlier this week who wasn't listed on the roster sheets they provided to fans. He put on quite a show and fans started wondering if it was the elusive Rocco Grimaldi, reporting to the Hawks. The team responded by saying No, it wasn't Grimaldi, just a player who was accidentally left off the roster sheet. Fair enough.

But, I don't think the question has been answered yet: who IS the player then? Everyone else in Portland's camp had their names made public on the sheets, so what's the issue with identifying this player? Was his name Bob Bell? Or Conor McRae?

We've beaten this horse many times but the issue isn't going away.....the WHL should conduct business professionally, in the open. This hush-hush secrecy that a few (emphasis on few) teams throw over their camps benefits no one. I don't believe for a minute that in this day and age any of these teams are doing anything shady but why would you not want to avoid at all costs even the slightest appearance that you are?

There are teams in this league - and very successful ones, I might add - who email me (and I'm a nobody, not even an actual media person!) rosters and updates directly, without even being asked. And then there's some who guard the identities of the players in their camps the way the identities of the Colonel's 11 herbs and spices are guarded. Why the polar opposite approaches to things?

Wednesday notes

Couple things today....

First, the 2010-11 WHL season kicks off tonight with the first preseason games. Swift Current visits Moose Jaw, and Saskatoon visits Prince Albert. Expect to see very few vets dressed for anyone in either game.

Training camp is also underway now for all but two teams, and those two teams get at it tomorrow. I've got current camp rosters for 14 teams below, and I guessed at the rosters for three others. Portland says they'll release a roster later today, and the other four teams are just getting started so there's nothing for them yet. We beat this horse to death this time last year, but I am once again disappointed that some teams (including a couple who didn't do it last year either) choose not to inform their fans of what's going on at camp. Traffic on this blog is up more than 50% in the last two days since I posted the rosters. Fans want to know this stuff and the teams that don't think this is important are snubbing their fans. What's the big secret? When the vast majority of teams see no problems with releasing rosters and cuts, I don't get why the rest don't do the same.

One other bit of news - the WHL will hold two outdoor games this year but today they announced another "special" game, which will thankfully be played indoors. The Kamloops Blazers and Vancouver Giants are going to play a regular season game February 12 in Whitehorse, Yukon. The game will be a Kamloops home game as it replaces the home game previously scheduled for Kamloops on that date. The average low temperature in Whitehorse in February is -19 C (-2 F), so this is definitely an indoor game....the game will be shown on CBC in Canada, as part of the network's annual "Hockey Day In Canada" festivites which also includes showing three NHL games....so they're showing four live hockey games that day.

The WHL has previously played preseason games in Yellowknife, NWT before, so this will not be the most northerly WHL game ever....but it will be the most northerly regular season game for sure.

NCAA - CHL thaw coming?

Some of you may have noticed I added a new blog to my links section the other day - Neate Sager's junior hockey blog for Yahoo Sports. If you're not reading it regularly already, you should start - he has a good roundup of CHL related stuff there.

And his blog is where I got informed about this piece this morning. An interesting read, focusing on the ongoing battle between the NCAA and CHL for top prospects. Of particular interest is the suggestion by College Hockey, Inc. (which represents the NCAA's interests in this fight) head Paul Kelly that the two sides may be prepared to try and work out an agreement that would reduce the tug-of-war over players.

Anything that makes the decision-making process easier on 15, 16, 17 year old kids cannot be a bad thing. I wonder though, what is in it for the CHL to deal with the NCAA when the "poaching" process is a one-way street that favors the CHL - the CHL can poach players from the NCAA all it wants. The NCAA's own rules prevent it from doing the same to CHL players. Unless the NCAA is prepared to budge on its position that the CHL represents professional hockey and CHL players are therefore ineligible to play NCAA hockey, I'm not sure what the NCAA has to offer players by way of a compromise.

One comment from Kelly stands out too: "I don't think the CHL should be drafting 14-15-16-year-old kids. But do I see that changing? That isn't going to happen."

I wonder, was he able to keep a straight face when saying that? Remember, he represents an organization that allows this. And this. And this. There's a saying about people who live in glass houses.

Chiefs announcement

The Spokane Chiefs will hold a press conference tomorrow at Avista Stadium in Spokane to announce "a special event".

They're holding a press conference at the local baseball stadium....gee, what could this announcement involve?

Minor trade

Spokane has acquired depth defenceman Bruin McDonald from the Prince George Cougars for a conditional 2011 6th round bantam draft pick.

I know what you're thinking....my first reaction too was, "somebody wanted a player not named Connolly or Forsberg off the Cougars' 09-10 roster? Really?".

I'm guessing the the conditions on the pick are that McDonald has to be able to stay in the Chiefs lineup past a certain date. The 18 year old McDonald has played 107 games for the Cougars over the last three seasons, including 6 games as a 15 year old in 07-08.

QMJHL distance traveled

Might as well complete the entire CHL on this now - here's the distance traveled by the QMJHL teams:

		km	miles
1	Cape Breton	29855	18551
2	Rouyn-Noranda	27111	16846
3	Halifax	24600	15286
4	Val-d'Or	23813	14797
5	P.E.I.	23719	14738
6	Acadie-Bathurst	22825	14183
7	Lewiston	22288	13849
8	Saint John	22214	13803
9	Gatineau	21572	13404
10	Moncton	21309	13241
11	Shawinigan	21014	13057
12	Québec	20933	13007
13	Montréal	20478	12724
14	Victoriaville	20334	12635
15	Baie-Comeau	20070	12471
16	Rimouski	20008	12432
17	Drummondville	19982	12416
18	Chicoutimi	19644	12206

Overall the QMJHL clocks in exactly where I expected they would - most of the teams in the QMJHL travel more than any OHL teams but less than most WHL teams. Couple big exceptions though, most notably Cape Breton, who have the distinction of being the most-traveled team in the entire CHL. Yes, they travel 39 more kilometers than Prince George does. And Rouyn-Noranda would be in the WHL's top four as well if they played in that league with that mileage. 

Of course these numbers are not written in stone and there are undoubtedly going to be some mistakes made on my part when trying to figure out whether a team stays over in a hotel after a game or returns home, etc, etc. So they are just estimates.....but I used the same approach for all three leagues so if I made mistakes, hopefully I made them equally everywhere.

One thing I did notice about the QMJHL schedules was that, like the OHL, they are very efficient with their road trips. Most teams in the QMJHL do not take the kind of 4 or 5 game road trips we see almost every team in the WHL take once or twice a year. Yes, some QMJHL teams do - but even when they do, it seems to be a Wednesday, Friday-Saturday-Sunday trip and then back home. You see WHL teams spend 8 or 9 days on the road to play 4 or 5 games sometimes. So, the OHL and QMJHL seem to be more efficient in their road trips but perhaps the smaller distances makes that easier.

I gave the longest and shortest distances in the WHL and OHL in earlier posts, so I'd best do it for the "Q" as well: longest driving distance between two cities in the QMJHL is (no surprise) Cape Breton to Rouyn-Noranda, which comes in at 2086 km. Shortest distance is Drummondville to Victoriaville, at 62 km. All distances, for all three leagues, come from Mapquest.

So, to wrap this up and rank the entire CHL.....I've taken the total km and divided it by the number of road games each team plays (to account for the fact that the WHL plays a 72 game schedule while the other two leagues play 68 games) and calculated the average driving distance per road game per team:

	team	league	km	games	avg km/game
1	Cape Breton	QMJHL	29855	34	878.1
2	Prince George	WHL	29816	36	828.2
3	Rouyn-Noranda	QMJHL	27111	34	797.4
4	Brandon	WHL	28548	36	793.0
5	Kootenay	WHL	28124	36	781.2
6	Edmonton	WHL	26931	36	748.1
7	Spokane	WHL	26856	36	746.0
8	Prince Albert	WHL	26785	36	744.0
9	Halifax	QMJHL	24600	34	723.5
10	Swift Current	WHL	25757	36	715.5
11	Tri-City	WHL	25602	36	711.2
12	Portland	WHL	25451	36	707.0
13	Kamloops	WHL	25393	36	705.4
14	Val-d'Or	QMJHL	23813	34	700.4
15	P.E.I.	QMJHL	23719	34	697.6
16	Lethbridge	WHL	24957	36	693.3
17	Medicine Hat	WHL	24825	36	689.6
18	Red Deer	WHL	24465	36	679.6
19	Saskatoon	WHL	24441	36	678.9
20	Acadie-Bathurst	QMJHL	22825	34	671.3
21	Regina	WHL	24111	36	669.7
22	Lewiston	QMJHL	22288	34	655.5
23	Saint John	QMJHL	22214	34	653.4
24	Vancouver	WHL	23096	36	641.5
25	Calgary	WHL	22941	36	637.3
26	Gatineau	QMJHL	21572	34	634.5
27	Moncton	QMJHL	21309	34	626.7
28	Everett	WHL	22447	36	623.5
29	Moose Jaw	WHL	22425	36	622.9
30	Kelowna	WHL	22346	36	620.7
31	Shawinigan	QMJHL	21014	34	618.1
32	Québec	QMJHL	20933	34	615.7
33	Seattle	WHL	21913	36	608.7
34	Montréal	QMJHL	20478	34	602.3
35	Victoriaville	QMJHL	20334	34	598.1
36	Baie-Comeau	QMJHL	20070	34	590.3
37	Rimouski	QMJHL	20008	34	588.5
38	Drummondville	QMJHL	19982	34	587.7
39	Chicoutimi	QMJHL	19644	34	577.8
40	Sault Ste Marie	OHL	19491	34	573.3
41	Ottawa	OHL	18579	34	546.4
42	Chilliwack	WHL	19231	36	534.2
43	Sudbury	OHL	17302	34	508.9
44	Erie	OHL	17089	34	502.6
45	Saginaw	OHL	16370	34	481.5
46	Plymouth	OHL	16325	34	480.1
47	Windsor	OHL	16198	34	476.4
48	Sarnia	OHL	15672	34	460.9
49	Kingston	OHL	15614	34	459.2
50	Belleville	OHL	14923	34	438.9
51	Niagara	OHL	14486	34	426.1
52	London	OHL	14437	34	424.6
53	Kitchener	OHL	14281	34	420.0
54	Guelph	OHL	13961	34	410.6
55	Owen Sound	OHL	13947	34	410.2
56	Oshawa	OHL	13491	34	396.8
57	Barrie	OHL	13387	34	393.7
58	Peterborough	OHL	13214	34	388.6
59	Brampton	OHL	12503	34	367.7
60	Mississauga	OHL	11784	34	346.6

When you look at those numbers at the top of the list and you realize that the Cape Bretons and the Prince Georges of the league are driving more than 800 km on average to play each road game....I think it gives us fans another perspective on the level of dedication these players have to the game. These guys are averaging 8 or 9 hours - at least - of bus travel for every three hour road game they play. That's commitment.

Distance traveled: WHL vs OHL

After my post yesterday about the distance traveled by WHL teams each season, a reader suggested that I calculate the distance traveled by the OHL teams and compare it to the WHL. Something I haven't done before, and I thought it made for an interesting idea. So, here we are.

No past years to compare it to, but here's the 2010-11 OHL projected travel distances:

		km	miles
1	Sault Ste Marie	19491	12114
2	Ottawa	18579	11547
3	Sudbury	17302	10753
4	Erie	17089	10621
5	Saginaw	16370	10174
6	Plymouth	16325	10146
7	Windsor	16198	10067
8	Sarnia	15672	9740
9	Kingston	15614	9704
10	Belleville	14923	9275
11	Niagara	14486	9003
12	London	14437	8973
13	Kitchener	14281	8876
14	Guelph	13961	8677
15	Owen Sound	13947	8668
16	Oshawa	13491	8385
17	Barrie	13387	8320
18	Peterborough	13214	8213
19	Brampton	12503	7771
20	Mississauga	11784	7324

As you can see by comparing this chart to the WHL one below, OHL teams have it a LOT easier than the WHL teams do. Which should be no surprise really, given that the entire OHL is contained within one province (and mostly within one small chunk of that province too) and three U.S. cities which are all fairly close to the Ontario border.

We need to keep in mind that the OHL teams only play 68 games instead of the WHL's 72, so they have 2 less road games to travel to, which bumps their numbers down slightly when comparing. But even if you add 5% or so to the OHL totals to account for those missing 2 games, only one OHL team - Sault Ste Marie, the most "remote" outpost in the league, has a travel schedule which is worse than the cushiest the WHL has to offer. And the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors travel only 11,784 km this season.....in the WHL, we call that "a weekend".

This isn't intended to be a bash-the-OHL post though.....the travel is what it is. I'm just showing the degree of the disparity in what the leagues go through. If I have time, I'll even do the QMJHL in the next few days too. I suspect the "Q" is probably going to rank somewhere in between the WHL and OHL - their teams are more spread out than the OHL's but not quite as much as the WHL's.

Couple other things.....

 - WHL fans can be dismissive of the shorter driving distances in the OHL but we do need to consider that some of these "shorter" drives actually take longer than the mileage would suggest, due to highways in Southern Ontario being considerably busier than the TransCanada is going through Saskatchewan. It may only be a 150 km trip but if your bus is only averaging 50 km/h, that takes three hours.

 - I've never really analyzed an OHL schedule before, and I was very surprised to see that there are actually very few road trips of longer than 3 games, for any team. I guess this is a luxury afforded by shorter distances of travel, even for inter-conference games. A typical "long" OHL road trip appears to be a weekend 3-in-3 and even then the total distance traveled may be only slightly more than what the Prince George Cougars do for a Wednesday one-off trip to Kamloops and back.

 - Longest driving distance between two cities in the OHL is between Sault Ste Marie and Erie, which clocks in at 969 km. In the WHL, it's Brandon to Portland, which is 2444 km.

 - Shortest distance in the OHL is Brampton to Mississauga, which measures (try not to laugh) 6.4 km between the two arenas. After a bad game the visiting coach could make the players walk home and nobody would complain it was abuse. The shortest distance in the WHL is Regina to Moose Jaw, which comes in at 71 km, followed very closely by Everett to Seattle at 74 km.

2010-11 road warriors

With the release of the official 2010-11 WHL schedule yesterday, it's time again to do something I've done here on the blog for the last couple years, and that's figure out how much travelling each team in the league does.


I've taken each team's schedule and calculated the distance they must travel from one game to the next, whether that is to the next city on a road trip, or whether it's going back home for a home game, or back home for a few days before heading out to the next road game, etc, etc. 

The chart below shows each team's estimated travel for 2010-11 in both kilometers and miles. Also included are the increase/decrease - in kilometers - from their 2009-10 travel, as well as where they ranked on travel in 2009-10 and 2008-09. 

		km	miles	change (km)	09-10 rank	08-09 rank
1.	Prince George	29816	18531	3288	3	3
2.	Brandon	28548	17743	-3504	1	1
3.	Kootenay	28124	17479	1810	4	2
4.	Edmonton	26931	16738	-695	2	4
5.	Spokane	26856	16691	1026	5	6
6.	Prince Albert	26785	16647	958	6	8
7.	Swift Current	25757	16008	1577	9	13
8.	Tri-City	25602	15912	2069	11	12
9.	Portland	25451	15818	-297	7	9
10.	Kamloops	25393	15782	2574	14	7
11.	Lethbridge	24957	15511	2132	13	11
12.	Medicine Hat	24825	15429	2344	16	20
13.	Red Deer	24465	15205	1744	15	5
14.	Saskatoon	24441	15190	1405	12	17
15.	Regina	24111	14985	4891	22	22
16.	Vancouver	23096	14354	1600	19	19
17.	Calgary	22941	14258	-1115	10	16
18.	Everett	22447	13951	1843	20	18
19.	Moose Jaw	22425	13937	683	18	14
20.	Kelowna	22346	13888	-2755	8	10
21.	Seattle	21913	13619	2086	21	21
22.	Chilliwack	19231	11952	-2526	17	15

As you can see, the four most-travelled teams have not changed in the last three years - it is always Brandon, Edmonton, Kootenay, and Prince George in some combination. Safe to say that this is because those are the teams most isolated from their closest competition. Edmonton being on that list always surprises me because they are actually fairly close geographically to a couple of their divisional rivals....but I guess overall they are far enough from enough teams to add up to a big mileage total.


On the other hand, Chilliwack has it the cushiest - they travel 2700 km less than their nearest competition at the bottom of the list. I couldn't believe that disparity when I saw the numbers the first time, so I recalculated Chilliwack to make sure it is right. It is.


To put things in another perspective there, Chilliwack travels 10,600 km less this season than Prince George does. Assuming the buses average 100 km/h on the road, that is 106 hours less travel time for the Bruins than for their divisional opponent up north. That's almost 4.5 complete days less on the bus.

Go west, young men

Yesterday saw a goaltender head from Saskatchewan to B.C.; today it's two defencemen in a pair of trades between East and B.C. division teams.

The first deal is between Prince Albert and Kelowna, and sees overage defenceman Brendan Wall heading to the Rockets for a 2011 7th round bantam pick.

The second deal is a swap of 19 year old defencemen between Moose Jaw and Kelowna and sees Kevin Smith heading to the Rockets, while Collin Bowman goes to the Warriors in return.

Broncos overage move

Swift Current resolved their goaltending issue today, shipping overage goaltender Morgan Clark to Prince George for a 2011 7th round bantam pick.

Clark was in competition with fellow overager Mark Friesen for the goaltending job in Speedy Creek. The Broncos obviously weren't going to keep two overagers in net, so now the job is Friesen's and they can work in a rookie goalie like Austin Smith as the backup....or Joni Ortio if he does come over from Finland. Although Ortio wouldn't come over to be the backup, I'm sure.

For the Cougars, Clark now gives them competition with 19 year old Hudson Stremmel for the #1 job there. Perhaps they keep both those guys as their tandem, or perhaps the loser of the #1 battle gets shipped out in favour of a younger goalie as backup....but that's what camp is for after all...

UPDATE: the Cougars' press release about the trade clarifies their situation - Stremmel has decided not to return to the WHL next season and will instead remain home in Reno, NV, to pursue his education. So, I guess Clark is the starter in P.G. now, with a rookie backup to be decided in camp....

A 2nd outdoor game?

The WHL's #1 reporter, Gregg Drinnan, has unearthed the fact that the WHL is actually planning TWO outdoor games this season. The second game is not finalized yet and as such may not happen, but it certainly sounds like they are pretty far along in the planning for it anyway.

So, the Calgary-Regina game may not be the only one.....in fact, it may not even be the first one, depending on when the "second" game gets scheduled in.

Gregg threw out Regina, Edmonton, Vancouver, Portland, and Kamloops as possible locations. Maybe it's just me but Vancouver and Portland can't be serious candidates due to the mild winter weather there. Vancouver is one of the warmest cities in Canada in winter and (according to Environment Canada) on average has only five days a year with temperatures below freezing. Portland is even further south and also has daily average lows of above freezing. So while it is possible that these cities could have adequately cold weather to support an outdoor rink on game day, it's pretty risky as more likely you are looking at having temperatures of well above freezing. It definitely could not be done without an ice plant to keep the ice frozen and once you do that you might as well put a roof on it....it's not really a "real" outdoor game when you're using artificially frozen ice, is it?

And yes, I know the NHL installs an ice plant for all their outdoor games and so the game in Calgary will have one....doesn't change the fact that they don't need to use that plant to keep the ice frozen if the weather is already doing that for them.

Regina and Edmonton make sense as they are known for their cold weather in the winter - every city in the Eastern conference is fine for those reasons actually. Kamloops also tends to have winter temperatures slightly below freezing, so it'll probably work there too. Wherever it ends up, I just hope they stick to putting it in places with actual winter weather.....lets not make the spectacle any goofier than it already is. Remember the NHL played an exhibition game outside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas once too....is that what we want to see again?

Outdoor game announced

The WHL and the Calgary Hitmen made official today what many of us have known/suspected for a while: the WHL will play its first outdoor game this coming season, on February 21 at McMahon Stadium in Calgary. The Regina Pats will provide the Hitmen's opposition for the afternoon game.

The NHL will be holding an outdoor game there the previous day, between the Calgary Flames and Montreal Canadiens, so the WHL will not have to go through the expense of setting up a rink in the football stadium - the NHL will take care of that and the WHL will simply use it the next day before it is torn down.

Personally, I think the outdoor game concept is getting a little overused already but it's still fun to see the WHL get involved. I'm sure many of the players in the league played on frozen ponds or outdoor community rinks when they were growing up so there's a connection there. But perhaps the outdoor game idea can be put to bed in the near future....it's not going to be interesting that much longer.

Now, we hope for a good -30C prairie winter day for the NHL game, followed by a nice Calgary chinook to warm things up to a pleasant -5 or so, or even 0 for the WHL game the next day.....

One other bit of WHL news to pass along, this one from the Tri-City Americans. Defenceman Eric Mestery has decided to retire from hockey rather than play next season as an overager. Mestery's decision will reduce the players competing for overage spots on the Americans down to probably four.

Team Ontario picked

Hockey Canada yesterday named the 22 players that will represent Canada at the Ivan Hlinka Memorial U-18 tournament in the Czech Republic later this month.

To the surprise of nobody who follows the WHL, the team that a famous person once dubbed "Team Ontario" cut 7 of the 11 WHLers trying out, leaving just four western boys on the team - defencemen Myles Bell (Regina Pats), Ryan Murray (Everett Silvertips) and Duncan Siemens (Saskatoon Blades), and forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (Red Deer Rebels).

The head coach is from the OHL. Even better, there are THREE players on the team from the OHL team he coaches. He's got almost as many of his own players on that team as he does from the entire WHL. That better be one hell of an OHL team he has there. They finished 2nd last overall in the OHL last year so I doubt it.

Four of the WHL cuts - forwards Michael St. Croix, Ty Rattie, Adam Lowry, and Colin Smith - had better seasons points-wise last year than all but two of the nine OHL forwards who did make the team. Heck, they even took a forward who played Jr A in Ontario last year ahead of any of those WHL guys. St. Croix lead his WHL team in scoring last season but apparently he's not better than a kid who played Jr A.

Team Ontario, indeed.