Day 1 is over . . .

If you’re tuning in here hoping to find game stories from the 2010 MasterCard Memorial Cup, sorry, but you’re in the wrong neighbourhood.
Rather, I hope to provide a feel for all that’s going on, along with some gossip, maybe some dirt and perhaps even some hard-nosed information.
So . . . let’s get started. . . .
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Geez, that’s a long drive from Calgary to Brandon. Surely someone can invent an automobile that can be placed on cruise control and will follow the highway while the driver sleeps . . . at least on the stretch from Strathmore to Brandon. . . .
This also is the land of bugs, meaning that whenever you gas up, you have to remember to clean the windshield. . . . And when you arrive at your destination, one of the first stops has to be a carwash, in order to remove the bugs from the front end of your vehicle. . . . And, yes, there were dead skunks in the middle of the road on the way here. . . . Now try to get that song out of your head. . . .
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It never fails.
You spend a couple of days driving a couple of thousand miles to cover an event and when you walk into the venue the first person you see is . . . no, not Graham James.
Actually, it was Dennis Coates, a Kamloops lawyer who has been on the Blazers’ board for a long, long time.
Yes, it’s a small world.
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Also ran into Bruce Penton earlier in the day. He was the beat writer on the Wheat Kings for the Brandon Sun when I started in this business. That was back in the day of Ron Chipperfield, Robbie Neale, Dwayne Pentland, Glen Hanlon et al. . . . Bruce is back in Brandon at the Westman Journal, although he soon will be returning to the Medicine Hat News. . . .
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Stolen from Penton’s column . . .
Possibly guaranteed to be overheard around the Keystone Centre during the 10 days of the Memorial Cup:
“What? The Memorial Cup’s being held in Brandon? No kiddin’. ”
“When’s the horse show start?”
“Is that Tom Cochrane? Isn’t he from Lynn Lake, the town made famous by Gregg Drinnan?”
“I walked from one end of the Keystone to the other and got more exercise than I do in a week back home in Windsor.”
“How can they spend money to hold a Memorial Cup when there’s homeless people in Brandon?”
“Hey, cabbie, take us to the casino.”
“Ah, what the heck, why don’t we just hold the Memorial Cup here every year?”
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Anyway, we are here, perched above the south end of the Westman Place ice surface. And I can tell you that this place has changed since I left here in 1983. I left the Winnipeg Tribune in the fall of 1979, returning to the Brandon Sun in order to cover the 1978-79 Wheat Kings. What a treat that season was! After five years here, it was on to the Regina Leader-Post and then to the Kamloops Daily News.
When I worked here, there was the Keystone Centre and that was about it. Geez, I became displaced — my late father said you never get lost, you just get displaced — while wandering around earlier in the afternoon. There are more tunnels and hallways in this complex than in an amusement park.
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The big question as the Memorial Cup gets started concerns F Brandon Kozun of the Calgary Hitmen, who was the leading point-getter in the WHL playoffs.
He was injured in the final game of the WHL’s championship final — he left early in the second period after sliding hard, feet-first, into the boards. After being off skates for a week, he returned to the ice late Friday morning as the Hitmen practised. Kozun only skated for about 10 minutes, though. Head coach Mike Williamson apparently ordered Kozun off the ice.
The Hitmen are saying all the right things . . . about keeping him off skates for precautionary reasons. It would seem we won’t know until game time early Saturday afternoon — the Hitmen open with the QMJHL’s Moncton Wildcats — whether he is ready to play or not.
Kozun is, as they say, a game-time decision with, yes, a lower-body injury.
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Who is favoured? I have seen where it’s the Windsor Spitfires, the defending champions. But I also have read that it’s the Calgary Hitmen. . . . Al Murray, Hockey Canada’s head scout, says you can flip a coin.
Me? I say the Spitfires are the champions until someone beats them. . . .
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Bruce Hamilton, the president and GM of the Kelowna Rockets, has said his organization will be bidding on the 2013 Memorial Cup. . . . The 2011 affair will be held in Mississauga, Ont., with the QMJHL to play host to the 2012 tournament. . . . The Rockets, of course, played host to the 2004 tournament; in fact, they won it all as the host team. . . . The Rockets also placed a bid to play host to the 2010 event, as did the Everett Silvertips. But when the Brandon Wheat Kings got involved, Everett and Kelowna withdrew their bids, allowing Brandon to more forward unimpeded.
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James Shewaga and Rob Henderson and the gang at the Brandon Sun did a stupendous job on their Memorial Cup section. Some great reading in there and you’ll enjoy it if you can get your hands on one. . . . The 1949 Wheat Kings, a team profiled in that section, are a great story. While doing research during the 1978-79 season, I can remember reading about how the fans would gather at the Brandon train station and serenade the players with ‘Irish Eyes are Smiling’ as they headed out on the playoff trail.
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FACES IN THE CROWD: Strolling the concourse while the Brandon Wheat Kings and Windsor Spitfires had their pregame warmups, one might bump into former Lethbridge Hurricanes GM Roy Stasiuk, now scouting for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and former Chilliwack Bruins GM Darrell May, now working for the Chicago Blackhawks. And might May end up with a Stanley Cup ring in his first season with the Blackhawks? . . . Former Moose Jaw Warriors GM Chad Lang — some might say future GM of the Regina Pats — has been a frequent visitor to Brandon over the last while. He is working for the CHL these days and, in fact, is in charge of hockey operations at this Memorial Cup. Prior to Game 1, he was singing the praises of the 800 volunteers. In fact, he said, there were so many people wanting to volunteer that the host committee had to cut the total off at 800. . . . Sherry Bassin, managing partner and GM of the OHL’s Erie Panthers, was enjoying a pregame bite in the media centre prior to Game 1. . . . If you were strolling the tunnels about two hours before Game 1, you may have run into Willie Desjardins, the GM/head coach of the Medicine Hat Tigers, looking positively natty in shorts and flip-flops. . . . Did I mention that it was 24C with some humidity on Friday? They have installed extra industrial-sized airconditioners just in case. . . .
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Attendance for Game 1 was announced at 5,378. I’m told that capacity, in terms of the number of tickets that can be sold, is somewhere between 5,100 and 5,200.
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For the record, the CHL assigned Matt Kirk and Pat Smith of the WHL, the OHL’s Darcy Burchell and the QMJHL’s Nicolas Dutil to the Memorial Cup. All are working their first Memorial Cup. The five linesmen, all from the WHL, are Chris Carlson, Justin Hull, Jeff Jobson, Trent Knorr and Kiel Murchison. . . . Kirk and Dutil worked Game 1 between Windsor and Brandon.