Saturday . . .

THE MacBETH REPORT:
F Dale Mahovsky (Kootenay, 2000-06) signed a one-year contract with Newcastle Vipers (UK Elite). He had nine goals and nine assists in 28 games for the University of Alberta (CIS) last season.
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Neate Sager of Yahoo! Sports has more on the CHL-NCAA war of words right here. . . .
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Sager also provided a link to a good piece about the OHL and education that was written by Jeff Hicks of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record in December 2009. Give it a look right here.
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The CHL-NCAA thing -- or NCAA-CHL thing, if you prefer -- isn’t going to go away any time soon.
But let’s be honest . . . there are enough flaws in both systems to go around. But they are what they are and both parties need to learn to work better together with what’s there.
Hicks’ piece from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record gets down to the nitty-gritty with the CHL’s education program.
Yes, the CHL blows its own horn a little too hard when it comes to its pronouncements on how many of its former players are on ‘scholarship’ and how many present players are furthering their education.
Yes, there are players who end up with little or even nothing out of the program, either because they don’t pursue an education or they go on to pro hockey.
And, yes, there are players who end up using the program as a stepping stone to medical school (hello, there, Blair St. Martin) or law school (hey, Larry Korchinski).
And there are a whole lot of players in the middle.
I would suggest the same holds true for those players choosing to attend NCAA schools. Some finish. Some don’t. It’s right for some players; it isn’t for others.
The bottom line, as Todd Bertuzzi might put it: It is what it is.
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The NCAA, however, appears to have one problem that the CHL seems to have eliminated. That involves one team taking a committed player away from another team.
Surf on over to westerncollegehockeyblog.com for a piece on a player who had said he was going to attend Dartmouth, an Ivy League school, but somehow ended up changing his mind and committing to Wisconsin.
That piece is right here.
I’m thinking that the NCAA should allow trades. That way Dartmouth at least could have gotten a dozen composite sticks and some pucks from Wisconsin. Or maybe even a bus. (You may recall that a WHL player named Tom Martin once was traded by the Seattle Breakers to the Victoria Cougars for a bus. You may even recall that Martin once played at the U of Denver.)