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nivek_wahs
03-26-2007, 03:33 AM
http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/sports/story.html?id=31c5ef49-e19f-4538-a67d-38f675b7a249


Timing right for Blades to make run at 2010 Cup

Doug McConachie, The StarPhoenix
Published: Monday, March 26, 2007

The Saskatoon Blades have a year to get their act together.

If this team is as serious as it claims to be about the future, the 2007-08 season will be instrumental in putting a stamp on where the team is headed.

With the nucleus of the club returning, combined with the organization's strategic positioning in collecting bantam draft picks in the next two years, the next logical step has to be hosting the 2010 Memorial Cup.

It will have been 21 years since Saskatoon last hosted the Canadian Major Junior Hockey League championship (1989) and if the Blades want fans to believe the team is for real, three years from now is perfect timing.

The bid deadline for 2010 is next summer. "We haven't even discussed it . . . it might come up at our annual general meeting in June, but the agenda hasn't even been set," WHL vice-president Richard Doerksen says.

For a team that didn't even make the playoffs this year, it might sound like a bad dream suggesting Memorial Cup and Saskatoon in the same breath. But for the past two decades, the long-range planning for such an event demands a two-year lead time.

Blades coach-general manager Lorne Molleken believes he's started the process toward respectability and has high expectations for the coming years. He is confident that the group of 16- and 17-year-olds who will join the team this fall will make an impact.

Equally as important, the Blades are in a super position to have their bantam draft picks play a significant role in the future.

They get the fourth overall pick in this year's draft on May 3 and then a 25th overall pick, in the second round.

Last year, they picked 15th and 36th. The difference between an early and late pick in the first round is astronomical. What a team does with it, of course, can spell the difference between success and mediocrity. All one has to do is compare top picks in the past couple of years. In 1999 Saskatoon chose defenceman Rob Wood second overall. A year later it picked Gabe Gauthier 12th.

Wood came, never delivered and was traded away. Gauthier never reported.

Every general manager will tell you when it comes to picking futures it's like trying to predict the upswings in the stock market or planning your vacation months in advance and expecting every day to be sunshine.

GMs will also tell you that they absolutely must have their first- and second-round picks produce. The team then hopes another one or two players will also make the team and, with a bit of luck, a late draft pick or walk-on at training camp is a hidden gem.

If that's the formula, then Saskatoon really shines in the wake of the Devin Setoguchi trade to Prince George at the start of this season. The Blades not only picked up Vancouver's Stefan Elliott, a highly regarded defensive prospect (picked 12th overall, who wasn't going to go to the Cougars) but they also get Prince George's first-round pick in 2008 to go along with their own.

If head scout Paul Olekszyk and Molleken's brother Doug have done their job, the draft picks from last year should be key members of the team three years from now, as 18-year-olds. Players chosen this year should be members of the Blades in 2008-09 and second-year players by the time the 2010 Memorial Cup rolls around. The 2008 draftees will be rookies in the Memorial Cup year.

It means Elliott, Teigan Zahn, Gaelan Patterson and perhaps Travis Toomey, goalie Adam Morrison and defencemen Curtis Hamilton and Mitch Berg have to be the leaders of tomorrow.

And by that time, long-suffering Blades fans will be deserving of a Memorial Cup tournament.

dmcconachie@sp.canwest.com

wango tango
03-28-2007, 01:55 PM
i'm guessing competing bids will come from red deer and lethbridge as both their facilities as well as the cuc are undergoing renovations. all three clubs also look to be in similar cycles on team building.

all three have plusses and minuses to a potential bid for the memorial cup.

should be interesting.

GBG BLEED BLUE
05-12-2007, 09:25 AM
A right to remain silent
Memorial Cup a priority, Saskatoon not likely to bid for 2010 world juniors


Cory Wolfe, The StarPhoenix Saskatoon
Published: Saturday, May 12, 2007
The StarPhoenix Saskatoon is likely to sit out the next round of bidding for the world junior hockey championship.

The city has been shortlisted for the event three times in the last five years.

However, the timing of the 2010 tournament would clash with the Saskatoon Blades' intention to bid for the 2010 Memorial Cup.


I'd be surprised if there wasn't some (local) interest shown," said Joe Bloski, who served as chair of past Saskatoon bids for the world junior tournament.

"But we have to make sure we do all of our homework and look at the potential of other events and what the reality is." Saskatoon hosted the international tournament in 1991 and bid unsuccessfully on events that were awarded to Halifax (2003), Vancouver (2006) and Ottawa (2009). Canada will also stage the 2010 event, it was announced Friday, because Hockey Canada was the only association to express interest.

The bid process has not officially begun. However, Bloski speculated that presentations would take place next spring. Bids for the 2010 Memorial Cup would likely be due by November 2008.

"I've indicated before that we will have an interest in the Memorial Cup in 2010. There's no question about that," said Blades president Jack Brodsky.

"Whether or not we'll be in a position to be serious about that, we'll know better probably in a year or so when we see how our hockey club is.

"But we plan to be that kind of team." The Memorial Cup tournament rotates among the Western Hockey League and major junior loops in Ontario and Quebec.

Vancouver is site of this year's event and the WHL's next turn to be host is 2010.

Certainly, Saskatoon won't go after both the Memorial Cup and world juniors. Committees for the two initiatives share common members.

"We have a great relationship with the Sports Tourism group," said Brodsky.

"I've worked together with them on the last couple of world junior bids and we've been in touch and talked already about the Memorial Cup (in 2010)." Unless the Blades give up that chase, Saskatoon is not likely to bid on the world junior tournament until 2012.

"You have to weigh all of the odds," said Bloski. "With the Olympics being in Western Canada in 2010 and the Memorial Cup being in Western Canada that spring, having the world juniors in Western Canada is not likely to happen."

cwolfe@sp.canwest.com


© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007

I would want to see the Memorial Cup in Saskatoon,over the World Junors anyway,as long as Saskatoon can get one of them,and by the sounds of things it will be the Memorial Cup before the World Juniors and I am fine with that.

GOBLADESGO#3 (among other aliases)
05-12-2007, 10:22 AM
Same here, something as big as the Memorial Cup is much more important than a tournament, though the Worlds is a big thing, the Memorial is jsut thst little bit better.

westbeach55
05-12-2007, 10:34 AM
I would rather have the world juniors over the mem cup if i had the choice

GOBLADESGO#3 (among other aliases)
06-21-2007, 11:02 AM
Well I just heared on Sportsnet that Saskatoon will host a game in the worlds. Does this rule out the possibility that they can host the memorial cup or are they still chasing that?

wango tango
06-21-2007, 11:31 AM
saskatoon is hosting one of the canada-russia super series games in september. this has no bearing on a possible memorial cup bid.