Monday, May 26, 2008

Can The WHL Three-Peat?

  • I want to personally congratulate the Spokane Chiefs for winning the Memorial Cup. I applaud GM Tim Speltz for building a championship team through the bantam draft, and consummating some top end trades. The Chiefs showed all of Canada that the Western Hockey League is indeed a power house. Back-to-back Memorial Cup titles is pretty impressive. The Giants won it last year, the Chiefs hold the crown this season. Can the WHL three-peat in Rimouski next season?
  • Drayson Bowman sure answered the bell at the Memorial Cup. It's one thing to put up good numbers during the regular season, but the brother of Rockets defenseman Collin Bowman was rock solid in putting up big numbers in the playoffs and at the Memorial Cup tournament.
  • What I want to know is did Chiefs radio play-by-play man Mike Boyle take his shoes off to call the Memorial Cup final? Boyle makes it a point of taking off his shoes when calling Chiefs games, but I'm wondering if the floor was to dirty in Kitchener for him to pull of his dress shoes to get comfortable in the broadcast booth?
  • Winning a Memorial Cup title is sweet, but one look at the calender tells you that in three months training camp will start up again. No one on the Chiefs roster will tell you they didn't enjoy every moment of it, but like anything, time away from the rink will be good for both the mind and the body.
  • Rockets GM Bruce Hamilton says he may make two selections at this summers CHL European draft. Hamilton isn't confident that he will land Mikael Backlund, after taking the Calgary Flames first round pick in last years Euro draft. Hamilton also isn't sure if Milan Kytnar fits into the teams plans next season either. Kytnar will be 19. It's uncertain if Kytnar even wants to return to play the role of defensive forward. He sure won't see much power play time with a returning cast that includes an abundance of 19 year-old forwards.
  • I had a chance Monday night to watch the 3rd period of the Wings/Penguins series. You have to love Chris Osgood's cat-eye mask and helmet. It's old school and I love it. Now if he just wouldn't fall down like he was shot every time someone touched him!!!
  • You can always learn from others. A good example of that was listening/watching the NHL.COM highlites from game two. Mike Emmerick was again calling the play-by-play, and when the Wings opened up the scoring he said "One nothing". He didn't need to say "One nothing Wings" because it was obvious from the fan reaction that the Wings had definitely scored. The more I listen to him, the more I like him.

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