Ghostrider Notebook
Well the big story this week is: Injuries.
The Riders now have 5 players out of the lineup and three of them are defensemen, Keagan Kingwell, Kevin Pierce and Kyle Haugo are all out and may not be back until the playoffs, which by the way start on or about Friday February 24th. Forwards Evan Traverse and Brendan Nemes are both out as well but Traverse is a possible for the weekend.
Kingwell had been on a run lately scoring 5 goals in his last four games, but it was in the last game in Grand Forks where he and Haugo and B Nemes got hurt. Coach Craig Mohr says the guys were not hurt by cheap shots but it was a “hard nosed” game.
Team Captain Alex Cheveldave was named as the Riders Boston Pizza Player of the Month for January, Cheveldave has 14G 21A and has easily been the Riders most consistent player both defensively and points wise plus he has played in every game despite fighting off the usual injuries D men pick up in the battle zone.
Aidan Wilson had 4 assists in the Kimberley game last Thursday, Keelan Saworski had 2G 1A and Brendan Nemes had 1G 1A . Brendan Henderson had the win in net.
In Nelson Keagan Kingwell scored 3 goals and had an assist and Alex Cheveldave had 1G 2A, that pairing has been effective but has been broken up with the Kingwell injury.
In Grand Forks the Riders had a 3-2 lead but as HC Mohr says we made "two mistakes" and the Bruins scored two perfect shot goals for the win. Justin Peers had 1G 1A in that game.
_________________________
In other news… according to this story here the WHL has made two schedules, one with the Kootenay Ice in Cranbrook and another with them in Nanaimo. They would not do that if it wasn't a real possibility... this time the rumours that we’ve heard for the last 10 years could actually be true.
The story above says if Nanaimo votes to build a new arena on March 11th the Ice will move there for next season. Just like they did when they moved from Edmonton to Cranbrook the Ice will play out of a small arena until the new one is built.
Another story also has the Clippers moving to Campbell River displacing the Jr B Storm.
So my questions are.
1/ Can the River actually support a BCHL team.
2/ Where will the Storm go.
3/ Will the KIJHL go back to Cranbrook, with their
KIJHL history would they (I'm just speculating here, no facts) get fast tracked.
4/ Or, and the Nanaimo bosses must have pondered this, would the Clippers move to Cranbrook and play in that great arena. The BCHL may not like that idea because of travel but it must have been at least looked at by both Cranbrook and Nanaimo.
Ha- Donald Fehr will rub that one in the NHL's face at some point in the future... and so now you know what the NHL really thinks of their puppets I mean players.
It's unlikely that Nanaimo will move the Clippers to Cranbrook. As mentioned in your article the travel is a major factor. Unlike The WHL, that has players who'd kill to play anywhere regardless of the travel, players who choose Jr. A are more likely to consider first trying out for teams with the best location for shorter trips. Cranbrook, like Trail, would always be hard pressed to ice a contender for the league championship. Not impossible but unlikely. As for the KIJHL it's much more likely Cranbrook will revive the Colts or maybe even use the Old Senior team name the Royals like Kimberley did with the Dynamiters. Cranbrook has always offered excellent support for their local hockey team and the overhead for the Jr B team would be substantially less than Jr A. The team might be playing for what appears to be an empty building for the most part but they will still bring in a decent number of fans comparatively to the rest of the KIJHL. The negative to this is teams like Fernie and Kimberley will suffer the same as they did when Cranbrook used to be in the league. The higher end players from Alberta and the Coast will first try out in Cranbrook to play in the bigger center with the nicest facility and then if cut make the calls to the other teams. Fernie and Kimberley rarely got first crack at the best kids. Invermere was strong but had an amazing program and a perfect executive at the time. Didn't hurt that their head coach was Tom Renney either. Golden may suffer the same tragic end they suffered back then. Non-existence. So, needless to say, losing the Ice will have much more impact regionally than just losing that high end hockey. It should be interesting to see what happens.
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY !
ReplyDeleteAnd why Fernie should be worried !
Good points by Shawn.
ReplyDeleteI live in Campbell River and can add what I'm hearing through the grapevine.
I think CR could support a Jr A team. CR is the same size as Penticton with about 40,000 people. The Storm get peak crowds of 1000, and regularly have 500.
The biggest hurdle is the rink. It simply is not Jr A caliber. There is talk of renovations, though I'm of the opinion a new rink should be built.
As for where the Storm would go, I haven't heard. I suspect one option woudl be the north island Port Macneil, though the travel would be a hurdle (for island teams - it's nothing compared to the KI).
I'm also hearing that there is strong resistance to a new rink in Nanaimo. However, I think it is resistance to a new rink, and not to WHL hockey, which seems like a natural fit in Nanaimo.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I never thought of the ripple effect that it could cause throughout BC junior hockey leagues.