Friday, April 04, 2008

Final Thoughts / Chynoweth Weighs In / Watt Speaks

- Just caught the Hitmen pre-game skate. Impressive. Five coaches/personnel took them through their paces including Head Coach and G.M Kelly Kisio and assistants Joel Otto and Dave Lowry.

- Side note, my first NHL autograph came from Joel Otto. I was 12 and he was playing for Team U.S.A in a Canada Cup exhibition game in Saskatoon in 1991. He was the only player who came out afterwards.


Press Release:

Dates For Game 4 & 5 Announced


The first five dates of the series have now been released with a complete series schedule to follow at a later date.
Game #1 - Friday, April 4th @ Swift Current (7:30 pm)
Game #2 - Saturday, April 5th @ Swift Current (7:30 pm)
Game #3 - Tuesday, April 8th @ Calgary (7:00 pm)
Game #4 - Wednesday, April 9th @ Calgary (7:00 pm)
Game #5 - Friday, April 11th @ Calgary (7:00 pm)*
Game #6 - To be determined*
Game #7 - To be determined*

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Broncos Head Coach and G.M Dean Chynoweth talked about this 2nd round series yesterday:


On the series format (2-3-1-1)...

I really like it. I think it's great. I think we have lots of momentum coming out of that last series winning the last three games. There's a buzz in town and we want to keep that buzz up.


On match up....

They have a lot of depth and that's the one thing we have said we have. It'll be interesting to see that match up. We like it with the forwards meaning that they feel they have three solid lines, we feel we have three solid line especially with how the kids have been playing.

On the back-end, obviously when you have a guy like Karl Alzner, we don't have that type of player. We hope to get some guys back in healthy during this series. We're going to have to really limit their opportunities. They (Calgary) generally outshot their opposition in every game and they don't give up a lot of shots.


On the injury front...

I don't know if we will have Felde or Dudas for games one or two but they should be real close to playing next week. Obviously Dudas will have a playing cast on as everyone knows he had a broken wrist and Felde is coming off the badly bruised knee after blocking a shot (against Regina). We would like to have them sooner but we also have to make sure they can contribute and are able to play at the level we need them too.


On the buzz around the city...

Just tremendous. I think you can't give the fans enough kudos. The way they followed us on the road in Regina, they way they've filled the building here. You can talk about it to the kids and you can tell them what it's going to be like but until they experience it they really don't know.
That's the nice thing about our hockey club right now, they are focused. They are excited about moving on to round two, excited about being the underdog and having a tall mountain to climb here... that's what playoffs are all about.


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Finally I was alerted to a Facebook group entitled "J.D. Watt Official Diving Team Fan Club". Some local fans started the group on the social network during round one of the playoffs.

The latest member to join? None other that J.D himself. He left this message for the group.

"haha thanks for the welcoming. congratz to you the fans and the broncos for beating us in the first round.you have a great team and even better fans. Take care and good luck!"

We're on the air tonight at 7pm with the pre-game show. Face-off I've been told has been pushed back to about 7:37pm to accommodate the Shaw TV broadcast.

Talk to you tonight!

Jon

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