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Cougars forward needs surgery |
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Written by JIM SWANSON, Citizen Sports Editor
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Sunday, 24 August 2008 |
Prince George Cougars injury update -- second-year defenceman Art Bidlevskii, who suffered cuts while trying to break up a fight between two dogs at his home in Kelowna, could miss this week while stitches get a chance to do their magic.
Defenceman Trevor Bauer (ankle, wrist) has already skated and looks to be close to 100 per cent.
The concerning development is forward Marcus Watson, who has developed a strange lower-leg ailment that feels like shin-splints. The problem is bigger than that -- lower compartmentalized syndrome is only correctable through surgery, and the team doctors will be evaluating him this week. It’s possible Watson, another of the team’s Californians who had six goals and 10 assists in 60 games last season, could be out until November.
“Marcus didn’t really know what was going on until about a week ago, and he thought it was just shin splints,” said head coach Drew Schoneck.
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Other news and notes from around the WHL, with most training camps in full swing:
--- Remember Matt Sokol? The forward from California, a former Portland Winter Hawk, barely made a ripple in a short stint with the Cougars last year, but now the 19-year-old finds himself in camp with the Saskatoon Blades. Sokol suited up for 14 games as a Cougar.
“It was kind of a mutual thing,” Sokol, a five-foot-10 winger, told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix about his time with Prince George.
“I wasn’t having a good time playing there. I needed to take some time off to figure out what I really wanted to do and get my head back into it. Now I’m back and ready to make a big jump this year.”
--- The Vancouver Giants have a triple-threat on the horizon. At the team’s rookie camp in Ladner were Port Alberni-based triplets Gerry, Leo and Myles Fitzgerald -- all forwards. They turn 15 today, and were making a case to be placed on the team’s 50-player protected list -- though that will be a tough hill to climb for players who stand just five-foot-one and weigh 100 pounds apiece.
“They have some similarities to Mike Comrie at the same age and we all know how that turned out,” Giants general manager Scott Bonner said in the Vancouver Province.
That’s hardly the end of the intrigue with the trio, either. The Fitzgeralds shared the title role in the 1999 movie Baby Geniuses, which also starred Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd.
--- The Cougars are in the market for 20-year-olds. They are also in the market for defencemen. If that comes as one-and-the-same, all the better for Cougars general manager Dallas Thompson, but the pickings are slim with very few top-end overage defencemen in the league, let alone available.
Which makes for one interesting possibility -- forward Jared Jagow is one of four 20-year-olds in Prince Albert’s camp, and the energy-type player could very well be the odd man out with the Raiders because the others have posted better numbers in previous seasons. Why so interesting? Because last year when the Rosetown, Sask., product was dealt from Regina to Prince Albert, he told a reporter “at least it wasn’t Prince George.”
But Jagow won’t see his rights land here... too bad Thompson poured water on that thought so quickly.
“I don’t think he’s the kind of player we’re looking for up front, no,” said Thompson.
“We’re looking for defencemen. I think we’ll be OK up front and in goal.”
--- Three WHL teams have put in bids for the 2010 Memorial Cup. What was supposed to be a secret is now out of the bag with Kelowna, Brandon and Everett pushing to host the CHL championship. Brandon is considered the clear favourite in part because the Western Conference has hosted most of the recent Memorial Cups, including Vancouver (2007), Kelowna (2004) and Spokane (1998). Regina had a turn in 2001.
The three competing franchises will make their presentations to the league board on Oct. 15, with a decision coming after that meeting, it is expected.
This season’s Memorial Cup will be held in Rimouski, home of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s Oceanic.
--- The war in Afghanistan has touched the WHL. Kamloops forward Scott Wasden, a 20-year-old who ended last season as the captain of the Blazers, received word his cousin, Cpt. Dustin Wasden, was one of three Canadian soldiers killed last Wednesday when a roadside bomb went off.
“I knew him very well,” Scott told the Kamloops Daily News. “We spent lots of family holidays together and Christmases... he was just a great
guy to be around. It’s just kind of unbelievable. You know there’s a risk of him being in the line of fire but you don’t think it’s going to happen to him.”
--- The Cougars aren’t the only team awaiting an international transfer for an import player, as is the case with German draft choice Jerome Flaake. The Kamloops Blazers are in paperwork limbo with Slovakian centre Dalibor Bortnak, while the same problem exists for the Tri-City Americans with Russian D Bogdan Kiselevich, taken 60th overall this summer.
--- The Portland Winter Hawks, still the subject of trade rumours, have lost one of their projected top defencemen. Bo Montgomery has decided to go to the University of Regina.
--- Then there is the case of the kid who doesn’t want to play anymore. Brandon Regier was a first-round draft pick of the Wheat Kings, played his maximum five games last season as a 15-year-old, and has now told the team he is quitting hockey.
“It’s never been my favourite thing to do in the world,” Regier told the Abbotsford News. “Everyone’s telling me they hope I change my mind. But I haven’t been on the ice since March, and I haven’t missed it at all.
“I’m just a kid -- my mind can change at any moment. I’m not going to promise I’m never going to play hockey again, but for now, I really don’t want to. Right now, I don’t think I’ll regret it. People who make it to the NHL want to be there (at the rink) every second of the day.”
--- Mark Friesen will be the starting goaltender this season with the Chilliwack Bruins -- that was all but assured when Matt Esposito, the No. 1 netminder a year ago, decided not to come to camp. Esposito has asked for a trade, and his comments in the Chilliwack Progress hint at wanting to play for his hometown Edmonton Oil Kings.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 24 August 2008 )
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