Wednesday Morning Update

Short Recap of a few U.S. Division games last night...

Kamloops stayed hot scoring 4 unanswered goals to beat Everett 6-4 at the Interior Savings Centre. Brady Calla tallied 3 assists against his former team, while Ivan Rohac chipped in two goals including the winner. Zach Hamill scored twice for Everett while Kyle Beach had only 1 assist but kept his PIM's pace with a 10 minute misconduct for a mouth-guard violation. Leland Irving stopped 32 of 38 in the loss with Justin LeClerc stopping 28/32 for the win.

Portland picked up their 4th win of the season at home over the Regina Pats. Regina is now 0-3 on their 5 game tour of the U.S. Division and visit Seattle tonight. Viktor Sjodin scored with over 4 minutes to play to break the 3-3 tie. Kurtis Mucha was solid again stopping 30/33 in the win. Nick Ross had two assists for Regina while Jeff Bosch stopped 24/28 shots in the loss. Jordan Eberle also tallied his 21st of the season. The super 17 year old is already closing in on his rookie year total of 28 goals.


Regina visits Seattle tonight in one of the few Wednesday night games for the Tbirds. Seattle has to be happy to get back on home ice after earning only 3 points on their Central Division road trip. Seattle ended the trip with an impressive 4-1 victory over Edmonton. Oil King coach Steve Pleau was so upset about the loss he sent his team on a post game run.

So Seattle comes into the game needing to build on the Edmonton game and gain some momentum before a big game against Everett Saturday and the rest of the holiday season. At 9-9-4 the Tbirds are 8th in the Western Conference. Having given up 59 goals and scored 55 they are roughly right where they deserve to be. By comparison Everett has score 76 goals and given up 77 and has a winning percentage of .558 suggesting that they are likely to regress back towards .500 until the numbers improve. Chilliwack at 76 for and 74 against but with a .580 would be another candidate to regress back to .500.

Bud Holloway leads Seattle with 10-9-19 with Thomas Hickey 2nd on the team in points at 6-11-17.

Benn Olson has 99 PIM's and obviously his next penalty will put him over 100 PIM's for the 3rd time in his WHL career.

Riku Helenius will likely be in net for Seattle and has played excellently of late with no support. Helenius is 5-7-3 with a 2.85 GAA and a .910 Sv%. Riku has faced an average of 30.4 shots per game and has stopped an average of 27.67 shots per game. These totals need to come DOWN for Seattle to be successful.