Michigan's Scout.com site got a pretty good interview with Michigan assistant Billy Powers. I found a few interesting tidbits in the interview:
On the goalie situation:
A: Billy would have to lose the job. He's entering the season as the clear-cut number one goalie. Mike Mayhew and Steve Jakiel will battle it out for who will be second in line, it's either of theirs for the taking.
Not great news for anyone hoping Jakiel would come in and challenge Sauer for the starting role.
And on the lineup for next year:
A: We have not looked at the lines yet. We're confident that we know what the team is going to look like now, but we don't want to jinx ourselves and that might be why we haven't talked much about it.
That seems to imply that it's very likely that T.J. Hensick will be back unless something drastic changes.
Speaking of Michigan offseason departures, Trevor Lewis' departure from Michigan is causing some controversy in Canada. Lewis signed to play with the Owen Sound Attack of the OHL. The only problem is that Lewis is a native of Utah, meaning his rights belong to the WHL. I was a little confused as to how Lewis was able to sign with Owen Sound in the first place. It should be interesting to see how that plays out.
The USA WJC Evaluation Camp is going on this week. CSTV reporter Eliot Olshanky is covering the event. There's a lot of good notes about WCHA and CCHA guys in there. This US team is shaping up pretty nicely. I still don't think they're in the same league as Canada though.
Speaking of international play, the US U18 team is taking on Canada in the championship of the Ivan Hlinka World tournament. The US beat the Czechs, Finns, and Russians to get to the finals. They made it there largely on the effort of goalie Jeremy Smith and forward Jimmy Hayes. I'm not expecting much from the US team today considering that this is essentially the USA's "B" team, while Canada's team was so deep that they cut Sam Gagner.
Scott Parse says he is officially returning. It provides yet another example of the LA Kings love for college hockey:
Parse, who will be a captain with the Mavs this season, was a sixth-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Kings in the 2004 NHL draft. Parse did not participate at L.A.'s prospects camp this summer, and he said his negotiations with the team during the off-season never got far.
"They don't want me," he said.
Well, that's stupid.
I could kind of see why they'd be wary of Parse, but it's not like he's a Peter Sejna or Junior Lessard that came out of nowhere as an upperclassmen and put up a ton of points against younger competition. Parse has been consistently excellent over his career at Omaha, and moreso, I think he's more likely for success in the NHL because he has the skating ability and defensive play that those players lacked.
Hockey's Future wrote about David Fischer's trip to the USA WJC Camp.
Every single great NHL hockey player that the State of Hockey has ever produced is helping with the WJC Camp.
Update: Canada defeated the US 3-0 in the U18 championships.
No comments:
Post a Comment