Last Game Before Break

Don't worry folks... I'm back. I've been on a little vacation for the past couple of weeks. This has been a really weird year for me. I feel like I missed more games for various reasons than any of the past 5 or 6 seasons. Certainly the most games I've had to miss since I started this blog. I even have to leave the game early tonight to play in my own game.  Hopefully, things will start to get back to normal here as I don't anticipate missing very many games for the rest of the season.

Seattle will get set to hit the holiday break by hosting the Tri-City Americans tonight on a "2 for Tuesday". The Birds have generally played pretty well lately with the exception of games against Portland and the meltdown over the weekend (and the Victoria game I suppose). This team is much improved over the versions we have seen in the past couple of seasons but you can see the growing pains of a team that hasn't done a whole lot of winning and the learning process associated with winning some of these close games.

They still rank 11th in the Massey Ratings and I would tend to agree with that ranking despite the .500 record.  Teams in the 1 and 2 spots are Portland and Spokane while Tri-City sits in the 6 hole.  Seattle's schedule is quite simply, very tough. Where they should have been able to make up some ground was out on their Eastern road swing.

Losing to Brandon (21st), Regina (19th) and Swift Current (14th) are games that will probably come back to haunt them in the standings when they are faced with all of these division games the rest of the way. That's the bad news. The good news is that they still have 2 meetings with Prince George and 3 meetings with Vancouver. Those are games that they really "must" win.  They also "must" win most of the games with Everett but Everett has played better lately and those rivalry games are never going to be "easy" to win.

Hopefully the players haven't already mentally packed things up for the holiday and they can come out and get a big win over the Yams tonight.

Final Note: Seattle traded Reid Fritzke to Swift Current for a conditional 5th round bantam selection.