Monday . . .

The WHL’s 20-year-old deadline is fast approaching — it gets here Thursday — and there is lots of talking going on among WHL general managers.
But only time will tell if anything happens.
The Medicine Hat Tigers, for example, had two scouts in Kamloops watching the Prince Albert Raiders beat the Raiders, 3-2, on Monday. One of those scouts lives in Kamloops; the other lives in Edmonton and was in Kelowna for a game on Saturday and in Chilliwack on Sunday.
The Kelowna Rockets had two people, including head scout Lorne Frey, in Kamloops on Monday to watch the Raiders and Blazers. Was that because the Raiders are in Kelowna on Wednesday or because the Rockets are looking for a defenceman or two?
The Medicine Hat News reports that Lethbridge Hurricanes GM Roy Stasiuk and Spokane Chiefs GM Speltz both were in the Gas City on Monday as the Kootenay Ice scored a 4-3 shootout victory over the Tigers. . . . With the return of C Mitch Fadden, Stasiuk now has four 20-year-olds on his roster so you know his phone is ringing.
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C Evander Kane of the Vancouver Giants is the Boston Pizza WHL player of the week after totaling seven points, including three goals, as his team went 1-0-0-1 last week. Calvin Pickard of the Seattle Thunderbirds, who went 1-0-0-1, is the WHL nominee as the ADT CHL goaltender of the week. He had a 0.48 GAA and a .978 save percentage. Pickard, 16, is the younger brother of Tri-City Americans G Chet Pickard, 19.
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MONDAY HIGHLIGHTS:
It was Thanksgiving Day in Canada and four teams had reason to give extra thanks . . .
In Lethbridge, C Mitch Fadden returned to the Hurricanes, scoring once and setting up another, in a 3-2 victory over the Regina Pats. . . . Fadden, a 34-goal man last season, was reassigned to the Hurricanes (6-3-0-0) last week by the AHL’s Norfolk Admirals. . . . The Pats (4-3-1-2) had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in this one as they got two PP goals from RW Jordan Eberle. . . . Regina F Matt Strueby had a five-game goal streak snapped. . . . Lethbridge F Colton Sceviour got the winner, 33 seconds into the third period. . . . So why is Fadden, 20, back in Lethbridge rather than Norfolk?
“It was a great camp. I made the team,” Fadden told Dylan Purcell of the Lethbridge Herald, “but there was a controversy with my contract. My agent and I felt that it wasn’t what we wanted it to be and we decided I’d come back here.”
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In Edmonton, F Brett Breitkreuz scored a PP goal at 1:38 of OT to give the Oil Kings a 6-5 victory over the Brandon Wheat Kings. . . . The Oil Kings (5-5-1-0) had lost their previous four games. . . . Brandon (5-4-1-0) had won its last two outings. . . . Breitkreuz, who had two goals and two helpers, scored the winner off a 3-on-2 break following a stop off C Matt Lowery by Edmonton G Dalyn Flette. . . . C Jeff Lee had three assists for Edmonton. . . . Brandon got two goals and two assists from F Jay Fehr and two goals and one assist from F Aaron Lewadniuk. Both players also were plus-4. . . . Edmonton was 3-for-5 on the PP; Brandon went into the game having given up only three PP goals in its first nine games.
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In Kamloops, F Ryan Harrison scored at 18:04 of the third period to give the Prince Albert Raiders a 3-2 victory over the Blazers. . . . It was the second game in a row in which the visiting had broken a 2-2 tie in the last two minutes of the third period to beat the Blazers. The Chilliwack Bruins did the same thing on Saturday. . . . The Raiders (6-5-0-0) are 2-2-0-0 on their western road trip. . . . The Blazers (4-6-0-1) have lost six of their last eight games. . . . C Justin Bernhardt had a goal and two assists for the Raiders, who got 44 saves out of G Garrett Zemlak. . . . Zemlak is 5-0-0-0 this season.
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In Medicine Hat, F Dustin Sylvester scored in the shootout to give the Kootenay Ice a 4-3 victory over the Tigers. . . . The Ice (4-5-1-3) had lost six of their previous seven games. . . . This was the Ice’s second road victory in seven tries. . . . The Tigers (4-3-2-2) have lost four of their last five games. This was their first loss in four home games. . . . Sylvester was the only one of five shooters to score in the circus. . . . Freshman G Tyler Bunz stopped 36 shots for the Tigers, while Ice G Nathan Lieuwen turned aside 15 shots.
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FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF I WISH I'D BEEN THERE: If you follow junior hockey at all, you know that the junior A and major junior leagues and teams spend a lot of time bad-mouthing each other. So it must have been quite a scene earlier this month when Alberta Junior Hockey League officials showed up for their second annual Showcase Weekend at Millenium Place in Sherwood Park and discovered Edmonton Oil Kings’ marketing people setting up an information booth.
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Here is an interesting story from the Los Angeles Times on goings-on at the home arena of the Tri-City Americans.