Tuesday . . .

Randy Bachman, former member of the Guess Who, Brave Belt and Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO), will be rockin’ the 2010 Memorial Cup. The Brandon Wheat Kings, the host team, announced Tuesday that Bachman will kick off Manitoba Homecoming on May 15 in the Manitoba Room at the Keystone Centre. It all will be part of Manitoba’s 140th birthday celebrations. . . . If you haven’t checked out Randy’s Vinyl Tap on CBC or his website, you don’t know what you’re missing.
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TSN's Bob McKenzie has an interesting piece right here on clean hits and the NHL. In this instance, one player delivered a clean hit to another, at which point a teammate of the hittee’s challenged the hitter to a fight. The hitter accepted the challenge and now will miss up to six weeks with a broken finger. These kinds of fights have become a regular part of the WHL, too, and it’s really too bad.
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The Seattle Thunderbirds of Kent issued a press release Tuesday afternoon that cause shockwaves in WHL fandom.
Despite the fact that the WHL’s trade deadline passed us by on Jan. 10, the Thunderbirds announced Tuesday that they have “acquired defenceman Austin Baecker from the Lethbridge Hurricanes for a conditional sixth-round selection in the 2011 bantam draft.” . . . The release made no mention of this trade’s timeliness in relation to the Jan. 10 trade deadline. . . . It did add that Baecker, 17, is from Kelowna and will remain with the BCHL’s Merritt Centennials. An 11th-round pick by Lethbridge in the 2007 bantam draft, he has one assist and 29 penalty minutes in 25 games with the Centennials.
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TUESDAY:
In Regina, the Red Deer Rebels got shootout goals from F Willie Coetzee and F Brett Ferguson and beat the Pats 3-2 on Tuesday night. . . . Regina F Matt Strueby forced OT with his second goal of the game, and 29th of the season, at 19:48 of the third period. . . . Strueby was the lone Regina skater to score in the shootout. . . . Red Deer F Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had a goal, his 19th, and an assist in regulation time. . . . Coetzee had Red Deer’s other goal, his 24th. . . . Red Deer was 2-for-10 on the PP; the Pats were 1-for-5. . . . Attendance was 4,111. . . . Regina G Damien Ketlo stopped 34 shots, 10 more than Red Deer’s Darcy Kuemper. . . . The Rebels (29-19-0-4) have won five in a row. . . . The Pats (23-25-3-3) have lost three straight and are six points out of the Eastern Conference’s last playoff spot.
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In Chilliwack, the Bruins scored four first-period goals and went on to beat the Lethbridge Hurricanes, 9-2. . . . F Ryan Howse, who hadn’t scored in six games, has two goals for the Bruins. He now has 37 goals on the season, tying him for the league lead with F Cody Eakin of the Swift Current Broncos. . . . D Mitch Topping also scored twice for the Bruins, who scored three goals, two of them on the PP, in the game’s first 6:08. . . . F Blair Wentworth, who hadn’t scored in 39 games, and D Jeff Einhorn, who hadn’t scored since Oct. 9, also had goals for Chilliwack. . . . The Bruins were 2-for-6 on the PP; Lethbridge was 1-for-6. . . . The Bruins (24-25-1-5) had lost their previous two games. They now are tied for sixth — with the Kamloops Blazers and Kelowna Rockets — in the Western Conference. . . . The Hurricanes (16-31-3-2) have lost five in a row. . . . Attendance was 3,154.