Broncos Impress at Skills Showcase

How 'bout this guy in the skills competition last night. Dale Wiese's blast of 99 mph wowed the crowd at the Houston Pizza Skills Challenge. Dale's shot edged Eric Doyle's 94 mph slapper just moments later. 99 mph? That's getting it up there isn't it. Team White edged Team Black 4-1 in the hardest shot contest.







Daniel Rakos took the shooting accuracy event as he hit all nine targets in 9.49 seconds. This event was a fun one as players had an unlimited amount of pucks to knock out the nine targets. The target zones would light up after they were hit by the pucks. Team White beat Team Black 3-2.


Zack Smith (pictured left) had the wheels going to take the fastest skater event. His lap of 11.80 seconds surprised many to be the winning time. Zack was a bit of a darkhorse in this event. You don't think of blazing speed with Zack Smith but now he's the reigning champ until next year's event. Derek Claffey did his best to stay upright. He almost lost it around two of the corners and later pulled up to me and said "they forgot to sharpen my skates."

"AAA" Home Hardware Legionnaire Shane Neigum (who's already played games with the Medicine Hat Tigers this season) and bantam "AA" Kabos Raider Luke Barry had strong showings in the event. Team Black dominated this event winning 5-1 in the head-to-head match-ups.




Kyle Moir (left) was perfect in the breakaway challenge making all 10 saves as the shooters tried to get creative in the one-on-one battle. Daniel Rakos scored on both his attempts on Travis Yonkman as he back-handed a puck through the 5-hole on his first attempt and went "bar and in" on a shot in his 2nd attempt. Moir and Rakos helped Team White to pick up the five points for the shootout win.


As mentioned in my last post, my shootout attempts both failed. You see, the moves I tried both require a fair amount of skill, oops. Maybe next year. I had fun though. It's not often you get a chance to do that with the guys. Overall Team White (Keen) edged Team Black (Switzer) 12-9 to win the event. I hope everyone in attendance had a good time and will be back next year.


In other news, the WHL Board of Governors are meeting in Calgary the next couple days. There are apparently eight topics on the ledger to be discussed. Broncos Head Coach and General Manager Dean Chynoweth says all eight have a lot of importance. One item that will be discussed will be the conference playoff rankings moving back to 1 through 8 like we had a couple years back. Teams would make the playoffs based on their performance against the Conference, not their division. The league got away from that format to try and get rivals to meet in the first round of playoffs. We'll see if there is any movement on that from

BOG. I will be talking to Broncos Governor Ben Wiebe to get a recap of the meetings once he returns. I'll post some thoughts at a later date and also try and use something for the Broncos pre-game show.



Also, former Bronco captain Dustin Friesen helped Team Canada win a gold medal at the World University Games in Italy last month. They beat Russia in the final 3-1. He'll be on an upcoming Bronco Big Show, hopefully Friday night before the Broncos take on the Prince Albert Raiders. Thanks to the Ramage billet family for giving me the heads up on that story.




Finally, as heard on the "Breakfast Boys" Eagle morning show. Did you hear about Chicago Bears quarterback Rex Grossman? Apparently he was out for supper last night with three of his teammates last night in a Chicago restaurant. A couple of upset Bears fans following the Super Bowl loss made some comments in passing like "nice game Rex" and "thanks for blowing the big one". After the 5th or 6th comment, Rex stood up and tossed his plate of food across the restaurant. Apparently one of the patrons intercepted it and ran it back all the way for a touchdown.




Back to work,
Jon