Friday News and Rumors

The NHL invited seven USHL players this week to their draft combine next month. This is an early indication of how many can be expected to be drafted in the first three rounds of the draft, since only about 100 players attend the event. Since there's likely several future draftees who are first attending college, this needs to be considered before anyone tries to make direct comparisons to the CHL. I haven't seen the full player list yet, but it'll be interesting to see how many NCAA USHL alums are on it as well... Port Colborne Sailors on thin ice... I'll go ahead and address a couple rumors that have popped up in the last couple of weeks. The first involves renovations to the Texas Tornado's Deja Blue Arena, a story bouncing around the local youth hockey community. There are plans to expand the seating capacity to 5,500. The arena is hosting an indoor football team this summer, and building managers also want to get a piece of the growing Collin County graduation ceremony pie. Also, by boosting capacity to 5,500, the arena will be able to position itself to host concerts. In general, it will go from an oversized ice rink to a full service facility. I have to wonder if the plans are a preemptive strike against International Coliseums Company, who has considered building a similarly sized building in nearby Allen (and probably adding a Central Hockey League team when finished). The area doesn't need two similar sized facilities, so the StarCenter folks are heading ICC off at the pass. The real question everyone seems to be asking is "will the expansion impact the Tornado?" I don't believe so. For one thing, the expansion is not anticipated to impact any of the walls of the the arena - all the new seating will take place within the original footprint. So no, I don't see the Tornado spending a season back in Blue Line. The other rumor involved the defection of three CHL teams to the NAHL. There appears to be some fire to this smoke, but I don't have a lot of details. There's not a lot of certainty, but it seems that the three teams that would be added to the NAHL's South Division would be the Odessa Jackalopes, Amarillo Gorillas, and the Lubbock Cotton Kings. I have several concerns with such a move. First off, attendance for all three teams have been in decline (that's a big reason why they're looking to cut costs and go juniors), and forced shifts from professional to junior hockey have never gone over well in this part of the country (see Tupelo, Tulsa, and Topeka for examples). Adding a new rival in Wichita Falls will help, but how much is hard to say. In addition, there's a decent chance Lubbock won't have a lease for next season. So while the South Division could use shoring up, at the end of the day we still don't know if it will happen. (insert pithy SWJHL comment here) And finally... with league seasons winding down, and players hanging up the skates for the summer, here's one goalie who knows what he's doing in the off season... Yaaaah, that's what I'm talking aboot...