CSS (not the fancy codey kind) midterms...

It may be the beginning of the NHL season, but it's already midterm season for the youngins  And by that you should know I mean draft rankings.

While the Jones/MacKinnon drama rolls on and the Q holds five of the top 10, Nikolas Brouillard, who was all sorts of fantastic on Sunday against Val-d'Or, is listed 148th among North American skaters.

Louis-Philip Guindon, for his part, is twelfth in terms of North American goaltenders. (The only Graham on that list is Charlie from Belleville. Oops.)

It's early yet, there are a lot of games still left to play. Including:

Rimouski: 28-11-1-4, 61 points, 4th in the league, 170 GF, 140 GA, won their last three straight, Peter Trainor is third in league scoring with 30 goals, 37 assists. Their netminder, Philippe Desrosiers, has a GAA that leads all rookies and is seventh overall (2.97), and he has a .905 SV%.

Drummondville: 24-15-2-1, 51 points, 8th in the league, 140 GF, 142 GA, just won 5-2 against Val-d'Or, Verrier still leads the team with 48 points in 42 games, and Guindon is the second-best rookie with a 3.19 GAA and .880 SV%. Domenic Graham is behind him with 3.26 and .872, and the most recent win under his belt.

Head-to-head: The only game opposing the two teams this season was a 7-5 Rimouski win where Verrier and Malouin each scored twice.

From midterms to exams (of a medical nature): Frédéric St-Denis is now among the group lining up to take a physical for his part in the extremely brief training camp currently being held by the Habs. He and Louis Leblanc, Patrick Holland, Michael Blunden, and Michael Bournival are lining up in a scrimmage to be held Thursday at the Bell Centre, along with Gabriel Dumont (among others). Other ex-Volts that got called up to participate in camps include Mike Hoffman and Sean Couturier. Meanwhile, André Bouvet-Morrissette is now in Milwaukee after being called up, and with the Springfield Falcons losing some of their players to training camp, maybe they can finally test Scott Howes and see what he's capable of...

The Circus

Instead of being pessimistic about Wednesday night's loss against Sherbrooke (that I totally called because teams with no wins tend to reverse that fate against teams I choose to blog about), I have decided to move on.

To the circus.

Yes! The circus: Not the actual circus, just a perpetual one with green-and-red tents even though it's not as close to Christmas as some store-fronts would have you believe (dear God. It's not even Halloween yet. Calm down already). The one with a moose on it as imposing as the stuffed animals in several Canadian souvenir boutiques, except this time they're actually a team to be reckoned with so maybe we should be a little scared. Draw some frown lines on that moose. They're ready!

(How apparent is it that I have not had coffee all day?)

Anyway. Starring ring-leader MacKinnon!

(Stop, hammer time?)
The keeper of the cage, Zachary Fucale:

Normally the lion would be in there but he's injured:

Careful bro, he'll totally rip your head off.

Quit judging my use of Photoshop (my sincere apologies to Jonathan Drouin). I only have an hour, here.

TVA Sports tried to be nice to us by headlining Ringleader and Archambault in their tweet, but when you click on the link, you quickly realize that tonight is not even remotely about Les Voltigeurs de Drummondville, it really is about the circus that has come to town. They will spin circles and amaze their audience and feed the media a ton of lines with their feats of glory!...But maybe, hopefully, somebody will ruin the circus.

Somebody wearing red and black.

For my first game back at the Centre Marcel Dionne in over two years, somebody wearing red and black better ruin the circus.

Okay, but seriously: Maybe I better feed you some numbers instead of my ridiculous analogies.

Halifax: 7-1-0-0, 14 points, second in the league (not sure why, they're dead-on with Quebec), 42 GF, 20 GA, 5-game winning streak, MacKinnon and Drouin each have 15 points in 8 and 7 games respectively, Fucale has a 2.25 GAA with a .901 SV%.

Drummondville: 4-4-0-0, 8 points, 10th in the league, 20 GF, 24 GA, just handed Sherbrooke their first win in franchise history, Archambault has 7 points in 8 games, Graham stands at 3.07 GAA and .867 SV%.

Head-to-head: Drummondville lost all three games against the Moose last season, the worst of which was their last: 6-2 on January 12th in Halifax. The others were by one goal, 4-3 and 2-1 respectively.

Alum-news?: I wish. Nothing of note that I can remember happened since the last post. If I'm wrong, let me know in the comments!