Game Night! Pats vs. Hitmen

The Pats return to the Brandt Centre ice tonight with a date with the Calgary Hitmen. The action will be hot both on and off the ice. For the first time ever, the Brandt Centre will have “Thirsty Thursday” as $8 will get you 32oz of Molson of product. This will also mark the return of WWE hall of famer, Bret “the Hitman” Hart to Regina. He will sign autographs on the concourse beginning when the door open at 6:00pm.

Calgary @ Regina October 20th, 2011 WHL Game Notes

Head to Head
This will be the second time in just over a week that the Hitmen and Pats have met. Last week in Calgary, The first 57 minutes of the hockey game, the Hitmen carried the play at home against the Pats. The Hitmen held a 3-1 lead until a Jordan Weal power play goal with 2:50 left in the 3rd cut the Hitmen lead to 3-2, then with the net empty, Dyson Stevenson tipped in a Brandon Davidson point shot with just 51 seconds left on the clock to tie the game. Overtime solved nothing, and in a shootout, both Jordan Weal and Morgan Klimchuk scored while Matt Hewitt stopped 2 of three Hitmen shooters for the 4-3 victory.

2011-12 against Calgary
GP G A Pts Pim +/-
Morgan Klimchuk 1 1 1 2 0 0
Dyson Stevenson 1 1 1 2 2 1
Jordan Weal 1 1 0 1 0 0

2011-12 Schedule: 2011-12 Specialty Teams
October 12th Regina 4 @ Calgary 3 s/o Power Play: 1/4 – 25% (0 shga)
October 20th Calgary @ Regina 7:00pm Penalty Kill: 6/8 – 75% (0 shg)
November 5th Calgary @ Regina 7:00pm
December 16th Regina @ Calgary 7:00pm

Injuries:
Dyson Stevenson (Lower Body) – Day to Day
Artem Bidlevskii (Upper Body) – Day to Day
Games lost due to injury – 8

Just the Facts
Pats Shrink Numbers:
Monday, the Regina Pats traded 19 year old forward, Campbell Elynuik to the Prince George Cougars in exchange for a conditional 6th round pick in the 2012 WHL Bantam Draft. This leaves the Pats with 14 forwards, 8 defencemen and 2 goaltenders.

Road Warriors:
The first half of the season for the Regina Pats is a grueling one 10 of their first 16 are on the road and if you extend it to early December, 20 of the Pats first 32 games are on the road. The road has been kind thus far for the blue and white as they currently are 5-1 away from the Brandt Centre to start the season

WHL Firsts:
This has been a quick start for the Regina Pats and a trio of rookies also achieved WHL firsts over the first three games:
Morgan Klimchuk – 1st WHL goal and point (Sept 23rd v/ SC)
Jack Rodewald – 1st WHL goal, point and multi-point night (Sept 23rd v/SC)
Dominik Volek – 1st WHL assist and point (Sept 23rd v/SC) 1st WHL goal (Sept 24th @ SC)
Adam Beukeboom – 1st WHL start in goal (Sept 30th @ KOO)
Dryden Hunt – 1st WHL point (Oct 1st @ LETH)
Kyle Burroughs – 1st WHL goal and point (Oct 7th v/ LETH)

4 Pats in ISS Scouting Report:
2 current Pats and 2 listed players are in the current ISS (International Scouting Services) preseason rankings that were released on October 16th:
Chandler Stephenson (C) – 63rd
Dominik Volek (C) – 124th

Listed Players:
Brady Skjei (D) (Currently playing with the USA Under-18 team in the US-NTDP) – 29th
Rhett Holland (D) (Currently playing with the Okotoks Oilers of the AJHL) – 114th

Weal Lethal in the Shootout:
The Pats have a pair of shootout victories already this season, and a big part of those wins has been the stick of Jordan Weal. He is 2/2 so far this season and in 2010-11 Weal went 8/11 for a combined 76.9%. For his career, Weal is a combined 16/26 for a scoring percentage of 61.5%

Milestones
*Jordan Weal is 18 points away from the magical 300 career WHL points mark and is 16th all time on the Pats point list. He one assist away from tying Josh Holden for 10th on the Pats all-time assist list. He is also 2 goals away from 100 for his WHL career.
*Brandon Underwood tonight is his 160 career WHL game and is 16 minutes away from 300 career minutes.
*Lane Scheidl is 5 games away from 150 for his WHL career. He is also 1 point away from 60 for his WHL career
*Brandon Davidson is 4 points away from the 100 point plateau for his WHL career
*Artem Bidlevskii is 24 minutes from 550 career penalty minutes.

Streaks:
*Jordan Weal has points in eight of nine games this season
*Brandon Davidson is on a three game points streak (3g, 1a)

Team Make-up:
16 Year Olds (95) – 3 (Burroughs, Klimchuk, Hunt)
17 Year Olds (94) – 5 (Peel, Rodewald, Stephenson, Volek, Beukeboom)
18 Year Olds (93) – 5 (Zimbaluk, Martell, Moser, Ouellette, Stevenson)
19 Year Olds (92) – 9 (Blidstrand, Jobke, Underwood, Olstad, Rieder, Scheidl, Weal, Hewitt)
20 Year Olds (91) – 2 (Davidson, Bidlevskii, Marantz)

5 (Saskatchewan), 8 (Alberta), 2 (Manitoba), 7 (British Columbia), 1 (Sweden), 1 (United States), 1 (Czech Republic)

Drafted/Signed Players:
Brandon Davidson (EDM 6th ’10), Jordan Weal (LA 3rd ’10), Ricard Blidstrand (PHI 7th ’10), Colton Jobke (Signed FA MINN)

Next 5 Games: (all times local) Last 5 Games:
Sat Oct 22nd @ Prince Albert 7:00pm Oct 15th @ Red Deer 4-1 L
Sun Oct 23rd v/ Prince Albert 6:00pm Oct 14th @ Edmonton 6-3 W
Wed Oct 26th @ Saskatoon 7:05pm Oct 12th @ Calgary 4-3 W
Fri Oct 28th v/ Edmonton 7:00pm Oct 8th v/ Prince George 2-0 L
Sat Oct 29th @ Moose Jaw 7:00pm Oct 7th v/ Lethbridge 5-4 W

Divisional Records:
East (2-0-0-0) Central (5-2-0-0) B.C. (0-1-0-0) U.S. (0-0-0-0) Home (2-1-0-0) Away (5-2-0-0)

From reginapats.com
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I may not be able to live blog tonight as I can't find the charger for my laptop so I may just throw a few updates and thoughts from my phone as the game goes along..... Maybe that will be better for the blog, it will probably give me a better opportunity to take and make notes (scribbling is quicker for me than typing). But we'll see.

GO PATS GO!