Wednesday Re-Set

Thanks to the weather in Edmonton yesterday, it might have been the smallest crowd at an Oil Kings game I've seen since thier re-birth. It was announced at 3382 but if there were more than 1000 people there I'd be surprised.

Small crowd for the Oil kings but it was definitely the biggest crowd The Pipeline Show has ever had as Dean and I were on location for the first time in our 4 season run.

Hitting the air from the bowels of Rexall Place enabled us to get some postgame interviews so we took advantage of that bu grabbing injured forward Tomas Vincour. We spoke with the Czech forward about his current season, the upcoming NHL draft and also the 2009 World Junior Championship for which he's likely to play a key role on his national team.

Forward Jeff Lee had the Gordie Howe hat-trick last night and was named first star. We spoke with him about the Oil Kings season, the playoff hunt, his transition from the NCAA to the WHL and a lot more.

Head coach Steve Pleau also stopped by and we had a pretty good discussion about his team and their growth from last year, some key players and where he sees the club in a couple of eyars from now.

From there we changed gears and dove into our World Junior coverage as December is largely WJC Month on TPS.

We wanted to take a closer look at the American entry so called up one of our key NCAA contributors, Jim Connolly from USCHO.com and he gave us the rundown on Team USA. We spoke about the omissions of guys like John Carlson, Nick Petrecki and Colin Long but also on the list of players who did make the cut.

Jim also spoke at length about Air Force and the bum rap they've gotten in the National Polls this season. Conference realignment also came up.

Of course we played Bad Ass Trivia as well.

Finally it was an extended 2-part interview with one of our favorite guests. Peter Loubardias from Rogers Sportsnet helped us dissect Team Canada's 38-player tryout roster starting with those who didn't get an invite; Kyle Beach, Jared Cowan, Mike Murphy and Logan Couture. We ended the program with WJC podium predictions from Dean, Peter and myself.

All of those interviews are available via podcast/RSS feed so if you missed it live, click our archive.

In the next day or so Dean and I will post our 22-man Canadian rosters.

One other item... TPS told you back on November 7th that J.F. Jacques was about "6 weeks away". Yesterday, Dean updated everyone again with the news that Jacques was skating on the weekend and that the Oilers are looking expecting he'll be ready to go in January. "He's looking good" an Oiler source told Dean yesterday.