Blazers Host Seattle

- The Blazers and the Seattle Thunderbirds meet in a key battle tonight at ISC for playoff positioning. The Blazers lead Seattle in the standings by just two points, but Seattle has two games in hand. The Blazers have won all three head-to-head meetings in all three ways possible. In regulation, in overtime, and in a shootout.



- Both these teams know about defensive misfortunes. The T-Birds played a long stretch without D Travis Bobbee and D Ryan Button. That's a loss of two of their top three or four d-men. According to the WHL injury report released yesterday, both are back in the line-up. This in advance of the Blazers headed down the stretch without D Austin Madaisky and D Brandon Underwood.



- Before tonight's game, the Blazers will be presented with a signed "good luck" banner from the folks at Scotiabank. The banner will be there up until this afternoon at the Scotiabank downtown location.



- Travel plans continue to come together for Whitehorse. The Blazers depart Friday morning when the chartered jet carrying both the Vancouver Giants and the New Brunswick bantam Flyers arrives in Kamloops. The three teams, plus WHL officials will then make the roughly 2400km flight together.



- The teams will arrive to a reception in the airport. There's a banquet Friday evening featuring Don Cherry and Ron MacLean from the CBC's Hockey Night in Canada. A few of the selected Blazers will attend the banquet and answer some questions from those on hand.



- Those wondering about watching the game? It'll be available for free online at whl.ca under the "WHL Live on Demand" tile. It'll also be available at cbc.ca/sports. Since the Blazers are dubbed the home team, I'll provide the play-by-play call from Takhini Arena.


Note the start time, its a 4pm PST face-off. It'll coincide with CBC's coverage of the Leafs game from Toronto vs the Montreal Canadiens.




- As for tonight's broadcast, we are on the air at 6:30pm with our Radio NL pre-game show from ISC. Our guest in the intermission will be Blazer D Austin Madaisky. He'll join us from his home in Surrey, BC as he begins the recovery process for his C-7 vertebrae fracture.


Jon