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by WCHBlog on Jun 8, 2009 11:00 AM PDT
7 comments
It's currently tryout season for many USHL teams. I caught parts of the Sioux Falls and Fargo camps here in the Twin Cities. The Unofficial Lincoln Stars Blog has been attending Lincoln's camp and had some great write-ups on some of the goings on.
Meanwhile, Huntington, West Virginia might be interested in starting a USHL franchise. Huntington is about 5ish hours from both Youngstown and Ann Arbor, who will be in the league next year. I'd think it wouldn't work unless the league added a few more eastern teams to start their own division and cut down on travel.
It also raises the question of how much bigger can the league get? There's a couple issues to consider. There enough kids to fill eight teams at Fargo's tryout camp, and overall the level of play was pretty good, But I'm not sure there was much more than one team's worth of USHL caliber players there. More expansion probably means more teams having to take younger kids and the level of play dropping a bit. Second, one of the big selling points of the USHL is that pretty much every player ends up playing Division I hockey, with a few exceptions. More teams plus the same or fewer NCAA programs means that won't be the case as much. The third issue has to do with long-term viability. We're living in a bit of a hockey boom here in the US, as a result of the strong economy in the 90's, and NHL expansion into new areas. A few years down the road, you may start to see the effects of a rough economy and those southern expansion teams dying on the overall talent pool, and the league may not be able to so many teams.
There was a minor bit of controversy to come out of the NHL Combine because one NHL team alledgedly asked a player if he was gay.
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Huntington!
I agree the geography could be improved here—we’re about 5 hours from Indy as well, I might add. I think with the shakiness in the minor league landscape they could possibly pick up some castoffs from the IHL and ECHL in the next 12 months.
After the 2 ushl camps i saw in the last couple of weeks
It looks weak anyway,i would put the top NAHL teams against any of them,Ceder Rapids looked like they had a bunch of softys on that team,total joke
Cedar Rapids is soft!
Haven’t seen a roster of who was at the camp, but as for protected players, Mac Bennett looks like their only star. Was Mac there? How about Costello?
I don’t think Cedar Rapids will be all that good next year. What was the other camp you saw?
If you think USHL tryout camps are going to be some great hockey, then you’re way off base. There are going to be kids who really stand out, kids who perform well, kids who perform once in awhile, and kids who don’t even belong. Mix those all together with the fact that they have never played together before, and you have some brutal hockey to watch. Go watch some NAHL camps. I’m sure over half the participants will be players who were cut from USHL camps. Some will even make NAHL squads. If they were bad when they tried out for the USHL team, how will they do in the NAHL? The top end teams in the NAHL could probably compete with the USHL. Look at St. Louis. Always tough and competitive with loads of talent, they could easily be competitive in the USHL. There aren’t many that I think could, but there are some.
Cedar Rapids is always soft, that’s not Carlson’s style. And neither Bennett or Costello were in camp. Both were attending the NHL Combine.
ushl blog
i disagree,the players i saw that were on the teams were soft,and say what you want if they played each other you would be suprised
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