Thursday Update

Only one Ranger prospect's team in action on Wednesday evening as Antoine Lafleur once again found himself watching from the bench as his Prince Edward Island Rocket took on the Baie-Comeau Drakkar on the road.

Lafleur is not going to get back into the lineup when his teammate is just named the QMJHL Defensive player of the week. That was the case on Wednesday as Marc-Antoine Gelinas stopped 48 out of 49 shots in the Prince Edward Island Rocket's 3-1 win over the Drakkar.

With the Rocket going 7-3 over their last 10 games it is going to be hard for Lafleur to get any playing time so we hope after the holiday break he gets traded. A change of scenery would do Lafleur a lot of good.

Prince Edward Island is on a 3 game in 4 nights road trip so game two is Thursday night so Lafleur might get the start.

Other news

With both Holiday breaks and World Junior Championships coming up the Ranger prospects who are not scattering everywhere will try to cram as many as 3 games in 3 nights in over the next 3 days.

Thursday in addition to Prince Edward Island, so are Brampton, Saginaw, and Halifax.

Friday will have more of the same from the Canadian Juniors along with Michigan Tech

World Under-20 Championships

Want to talk about some crazy set ups then you have the various divisions that make up the World Under-20 Championships or as we normally call them the WJCs. The main division is called the Top Division or A Pool.

"A" Pool features the 10 best junior teams in 2 groups playing round robin play in the preliminary rounds. In addition to trying to advance the teams are also trying to avoid having the 2 worst records as those teams are demoted to the Division 1 level for the next year.

In Division 1 12 teams in 2 different groups are fighting to return to the "A" pool or trying to avoid a demotion to Division 2 for the following year. Playing this year in Division are teams from Great Britain and the Ukraine.

In Division 2 also 12 teams also in 2 different groups as they are looking to move up to Division 1 or demotion to Division 3. A couple of teams playing at this level include Japan, South Korea, China and Mexico.

Division 3 is made up of 6 teams with only a chance to move up. Making their World Championship debut this year is South Africa. In the not so distant future we might see teams from Israel and Greece joining these Championships.

Our new friends from the IIHF have been a great help explaining how these games work and will be keeping us informed about how all the teams do at these games.