Cuts and things and and Mahbod gets a new home.

Let's divide this by league, shall we...

ECHL:

The Alaska Aces have signed forwards Shawn Skelly and Samson Mahbod (pronounced muh-BAWD) and defenseman Mike Baran (pronounced BARE-uhn), Alaska Aces Head Coach Rob Murray announced on Friday. The additions are much needed for the shorthanded Aces, who prior to these signings were down to 12 active skaters for Friday. All three players have met the Aces on the road, and are expected to be in the lineup on Friday night. The Aces begin a three-game road trip on Friday night against the Idaho Steelheads at 5:10pm AKT [...]

Mahbod, 23, is set to make his season debut with the Aces this weekend in Idaho. This is the third pro season for the 5'10", 171lbs. forward. He spent his rookie season in the ECHL and last year played for the Arizona Sundogs in the Central Hockey League. Following a junior career split between the QMJHL and the QJAHL the Montreal, Quebec native played for four different ECHL teams as a rookie. He had a combined 26 points (10g, 16a) in 47 regular season games with the Elmira Jackals, South Carolina Stingrays, and Cincinnati Cyclones. He also played in six playoff games with the Utah Grizzlies, tallying one goal. Last year with the Sundogs, Mahbod totaled 22 points (7g, 15a) in 43 games in an injury-shortened season. This season Mahbod took training camp with the Orlando Solar Bears, but was released prior to the start of the season. In major junior hockey, Mahbod had 168 points (57g, 111a) in 164 games for four different clubs. He finished his junior career with two tremendous seasons in the QMJHL, combining for 50 goals, 93 assists and 143 points in 118 games. In 2009 as a member of the Drummondville Voltigeurs, Mahbod had 13 points (5g, 8a) in 19 games, while helping Drummondville to their first ever QMJHL Championship. Mahbod recorded an assist in a 3-2 win during Game 7 of the Finals. He also scored in the Semifinals of the Memorial Cup in an eventual 3-2 overtime loss.

Not entirely sure I'm down with that pronunciation  and I really didn't need to read that last sentence (or the last part of the last sentence) but I digress.

NHL: After I let some terrifying waiver-claim nightmare scenarios dance around in my brain yesterday, Frédéric St-Denis was allowed to go back to Hamilton in the end. After last night's scrimmage, Gabriel Dumont will join him. Mike Hoffman was sent back to Binghamton while Guillaume Latendresse's new number is 73. Meanwhile, Dmitry Kulikov signed a new deal with Florida. Official rosters are due to be set this afternoon at 5:00 p.m....

AHL: With a depleted Hamilton lineup, Philippe Lefebvre was able to score his first goal of the season against Abbotsford. The Bulldogs lost in the shootout 2-1, however.

CIS: At their carnival game that by all accounts was a packed house, McGill beat UQTR 4-2 on Wednesday. Here is what that scoresheet looked like:

SCORING SUMMARY
-- 1st --
McGill	14:55	PP - David Rose (Jean-Philippe Mathieu & Marc-Olivier Vachon)
McGill	15:41	PP - Guillaume Monast (Hugo Laporte & Chris Longpre-Poirier)
-- 2nd --
UQTR	9:18	Tommy Tremblay (Pierre-Luc Lessard & Antoine Quevillon)
UQTR	15:48	Emmanuel Boudreau (Olivier Donovan & Marc-Olivier Mimar)
-- 3rd --
McGill	0:32	Marc-Olivier Vachon (David Rose & Benoit Levesque)
McGill	18:50	EN - Max Le Sieur (Jean-Philippe Mathieu & Benoit Levesque)

Their next game is tonight at 7 p.m. against Ottawa and will be webcast live on www.ssncanada.ca/games/ .

Meanwhile, on the same night, UNB plastered St. Thomas 7-0. Marc-Antoine Desnoyers recorded two assists and a team-high 7 shots on goal.

In regular news, Drummondville still hasn't played that game against Rimouski yet. Get to it already.

The Road to Atlantis, or at least Atlantic Canada

A look at the weekend that was for the Drummondville Voltigeurs:

The Circus, Part II, went about as well as part I:

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	1	1	0	2
HALIFAX	2	1	3	6

Drummondville: Török scored and later assisted on Archambault's 7th of the year. M-O Brouillard had two helpers.
Halifax: Fuhgeddaboudit. Drouin makes his return to the lineup in this game and winds up with 4 points including two goals (one shorthanded), +3 and first star. Some MacKinnon guy scored two goals as well. One of my favourite names in the league (as @EP31 has had the misfortune of witnessing in person those times they played at the Verdun Auditorium), Konrad Abeltshauser, picked up two assists.

The plus side:

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	2 / 5
HALIFAX	2 / 6

Louis-Philip Guindon still managed 27 saves despite the loss. His counterpart, Zachary Fucale, made 16/18 stops.

Enter Graham! (Remember that guy?):

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	2	1	1	4
CAPE BRETON	1	0	0	1

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	1 / 3
CAPE BRETON	0 / 2

Drummondville: With the exception of M-O Brouillard, it was a J night. Jérôme Verrier! Jérémy Auger! Joey Ratelle! (First goal in the Q for the latter.) And hold on to your chairs, as the most assists category of the night was won by ...Archambault.
Cape Breton: Alexandre Lavoie was the lone goal-scorer for the Eagles.

Graham stopped all but one of 17 shots and Alex Bureau was pretty busy with 39 shots, stopping 35.

Deflate that happy-faced balloon: Just when we thought putting Graham in for the second time in 24 hours against the same team wasn't a crazy idea, Cape Breton said "And now, for a taste of your own medicine!"

GOALS	1	2	3	Total
DRUMMONDVILLE	0	1	0	1
CAPE BRETON	1	1	2	4

Womp womp.

POWER PLAY
DRUMMONDVILLE	0 / 3
CAPE BRETON	0 / 1

Drummondville: Matt Boudens gets his first of the year!
Cape Breton: Carrier, Lavoie, Malone, Woodworth. Former Voltigeur Jonathan Oligny got on the scoresheet as well with an assist (and two delay-of-game penalties), finishing +3 on the night.

Domenic Graham made 17 saves on 20 shots, while Philippe Trudeau made 15 on 16.

Friday, the Huskies are in town:
Rouyn-Noranda: 12-3-0-1, 25 points, second in the league behind the Circus, 78 GF, 53 GA, four-game winning streak, J-S Dea and Sven Andrighetto top the league with 31 points each in 16 games, Robin Gusse has a 3.07 GAA with a .887 SV%.

Drummondville: 8-8-0-0, 16 points, 10th in the league, 44 GF, 53 GA, went 1-2 on their Atlantic roadie, M-O Brouillard leads the team with 16 points in as many games followed by Archambault with 15 points, Guindon is the league's best rookie netminder at 3.10 GAA and .877 SV%. Graham has a .858 SV% and a 3.18 GAA.

Head-to-head: Split so far this season (4-2 loss, 5-4 win) with Török's hat trick the freshest memory between the two teams.

Around the league:

Apparently, Étienne Marcoux is Sugar Crisp's latest poster-boy. This reminds me of the good old Gretzky Wheaties days:



Alum-news: It was a losing weekend for most ex-Volts in the AHL, but Sean Couturier picked up assists on both goals in a losing cause against Rochester on Saturday, as well as second star. Moving back to Friday night, both Frédéric St-Denis and Gabriel Dumont scored en route to a 5-4 overtime loss against those pesky Toronto Marlies, and Jake Allen made 32 saves against the Chicago Wolves as Peoria beat them 4-1.

Olivier Fortier has found a home with the Orlando Solar Bears of the ECHL and scored what is already his third goal of the season as Greenville topped Orlando 6-5 on Sunday. Philippe Lefebvre picked up a goal in a shootout win vs. Reading on Saturday and two assists as Wheeling won 7-3 the night before against those same Royals.

In the CHL, Pier-Olivier Pelletier made 42 saves in a 6-4 win against Wichita on Friday. On the same night, he who now goes by Scotty Howes picked up two goals, both on the power play.

What other HL's am I forgetting? Ah, yes. KHL. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl's Dmitry Kulikov has 3 goals and one assist in 12 games so far this season. And since I'm already in Europe, Tomáš Svoboda has apparently been stopped in his tracks (3G, 5A in 7GP for HC Kometa Brno) with a shoulder injury that will sideline him for another month or so while fellow Czech Tomáš, Zohorna, has nine points, including four goals, in 17 games for HC Pardubice, team of the Hemskys, Krejcis et compagnie.

So...

Perhaps the fact that I have rescued and started blasting my old Nevermind CD is enough to represent the last two days.

Never mind, indeed.

"Bright" side: looking terrible is something of a trend in the Q lately. Halifax swept Moncton, Cape Breton is in the midst of wondering why they couldn't have switched places with P.E.I., and in the biggest twist, Victoriaville is down 3-0 in the series to Baie-Comeau. (There goes my "that should be an easy 5" prediction). Bathurst is literally the only team who was able to snag a game despite being the ones down in the series. Let's hope they don't end up being the only ones to do so in the entire first round.

BUT IN OTHER NEWS...

PRINCETON, N.J. – Yannick Riendeau of the Reading Royals is the Sher-Wood Hockey ECHL Player of the Week for March 19-25.

The 23-year-old right wing scored three goals, added five assists and was a +9 in three games last week, helping the Royals go 3-0-0 for the week to move into the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Riendeau opened the week with an assist in a 3-2 shootout win against Trenton on Friday and then scored two goals and added two assists as part of a +4 effort in a 7-0 victory at Trenton on Saturday. He ended the week with three points (1g-2a) and another +4 rating in a 5-3 win against the Titans on Sunday.

A native of Boucherville, Quebec, Riendeau has 41 points (12g-29a) in 40 games with the Royals this season. He also has tallied six point (3g-3a) in 18 games with Providence of the American Hockey League.

Under contract to the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League, Riendeau has 89 points (33g-56a) in 100 career games with Reading and has tallied 11 points (4g-7a) in 46 career games AHL games with Providence.

On behalf of Yannick Riendeau, a case of pucks will be donated to a Reading youth hockey organization by Sher-Wood Hockey, the exclusive puck supplier of the ECHL. Since beginning its sponsorship of the award in 2000-01, Sher-Wood Hockey has donated more than 25,000 pucks to youth hockey organizations in ECHL cities.

Should've just made this blog about Volts' alumni, the way this is going: McGill is still off celebrating, Scott Howes had a goal in a 5-4 Bridgeport win, and Dmitry Kulikov was the latest participant in bringing down the Habs (+2, 21:18) after Sean Couturier, also in the "Volts gone too soon" category (1A, 2PIM, 16:55) had his turn on Saturday.