Old Teammates Set to Battle

There will be a lot familiar faces Saturday night in Cranbrook as the Broncos and the Kootenay Ice battle just a week after a four player swap.

The Broncos will have John Negrin and Michael Stickland in the line-up while the ice now feature James Martin and Christian Magnus.

Leading up to the game, I spoke with Kootenay Ice General Manager Jeff Chynoweth on the trade.

On the two players they acquire from the Broncos:

"We needed a defenseman back in the deal and James Martin is a big defenseman, he's a little raw because he hasn't played a lot this year. He's a 2nd round bantam pick in 2006. That will give us four 1991 born defenseman. That was one of the key things in the deal. We are going to lose two - 20 year old defenseman and obviously John Negrin so we needed to get a defenseman who has a little WHL experience.

We looked at Magnus as a guy in the 1992 age group that our scouting staff had ranked 1st in Saskatchewan in the 2007 bantam draft. He was sort of the nugget in the deal that really turned it and made us consider making the transaction.

It's funny... I know on the Broncos side they think they gave up too much but on the other end I think the Kootenay organization doesn't think they got enough. Going into it we knew what we wanted to get and I think this deal serves both teams very well"


On trying to get back in the "Chynoweth Cup" season series being down 2-0:

" Well isn't it 0-0-1-1? Or how do you put it with a shoot-out and overtime loss? I think my mom is the only one who's happy because everyone has points in both games we played each other this year. Swift Current has a very good hockey team, they are getting all their players back from injuries and I think in the 2nd half here they are going to be a team that will be very tough to beat."

---------------------

The Broncos begin the weekend swing in Lethbridge against a re-energised Hurricanes team following a pair of wins in Moose Jaw and Prince Albert.

The 'Canes rallied back last night scoring two goals in the final minute to eventually beat the Raiders 4-3 in a shootout.

It's the third meeting of the season between the two teams. The season series is 1-1.

We're on the air at 7:30pm with the pre-game show, 8pm with the play-by-play. You can hear the entire Jeff Chynoweth interview on our pre-game show.

Broncos F Cody Eakin will also re-live the Top Prospects experience including his two goal performance in a Team Orr 6-1 win over Team Cherry.

Also, I've been told our Internet streaming is up and running again. We missed a few games with some difficulties but our engineers tell me we are back online.


Jon