Senior Hockey Provincials

I'll try to follow local senior, and minor hockey provincials on the blog again this year as much as possible. Here's a bit of a preview from a source requesting anonymity. Sounds fancy, doesn't it.

Seriously though, a faithful blog reader who sees his fair share of senior hockey in the area sent this to me last night.

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Steiner,

Just a heads up, the Senior provincial draws are out now on the SHA website.

http://sha.sk.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=94

There are some pretty good first round match ups for the teams from the leagues in this area, and as a bonus to you, you get some unsolicited and free analysis on some of the match ups.

Theodore and Langenburg are going for it in Senior A again. Langenburg has Cupar, Theodore gets Southey.

Theodore's squad is very impressive and their competition in the FLHL is a bit better than last year, so I think they may be better prepared. Two former Buffalos, Rob Kozak and Lee Poncelet have signed on to play with them for provincials.

Langenburg is a bit of a mystery, they didn't add a whole lot from last year, and seem to be have less depth. If Cassan, Lucky and Bowtell are all there at the same time and if Chipelski can play 45 minutes a game like he has been in the league, they might make a round or two. From what I hear the team to beat in the south is Balgonie again. On top of their impressively stacked QVHL team, word is they picked up Jamie Heward and Mike Sillinger for their provincials run this year.

Esterhazy is going for it in B again, they have Kelliher in the first round. They've got much improved goaltending and scoring depth from last season where they lost to Shaunavon in the south final, but they lost a bit on defense from last year. Balcarres has Strasbourg in the first round.

In the C draw Whitewood has Milestone from the QVHL. Whitewood's a puzzling team. There aren't many young senior teams that skate, check and overall work as hard as these guys, but literally no one puts the puck in the net for them. They lose a lot of games scoring less than 3 goals while giving up 6 or more.

Bredenbury has Redvers in the first round. The Cougars are another head scratcher. They clawed through the first or 7 seasons of this incarnation in their existence as a perennial cellar dwellar, then started to get some legitimacy last year when Andy Katzberg signed on. This season they added former minor pro players Conrad McKay, Darcy Johnson and Justin Keller, mostly because of association with Katzberg. Often times it looks like there is not enough puck for all those guys. One stretch before Xmas with both McKay and Johnson hurt and the Cougars short manned, Keller would play 50 plus minutes a game.

Rocanville and Wawota have a first round meeting. I've only seen the Tigers once this season, they were short benched on the night, but Jeff Odgers was in the lineup that night vs. Esterhazy. The Flyers handled them easily and got Odgers so riled up early, he was mostly ineffective the rest of the night. The biggest thing for these guys, as is the case with most Sr. teams, is getting a full line up for games. They have some talented local guys, they just haven't all been together much this season.

Wadena gets Leroy in a north side first round meeting. Wadena's young, not an abundance of talent there, but they like to play hard and could be evenly matched against teams in this bracket.

Kelvington is the only team in D in the area, they have Naicam. The Wheat Kings can score, I saw them blank Preeceville 13-0 last Friday night. They've got 2 very good lines that can score, and get a lot of offense from Kyle Hope on the back end. He's arguably the top d-man in the FLHL.

Cheers,