Blue Biscuits

I thought I'd take some time and update everyone on where some of our affiliat teams stand as well as some of our top prospects.

Lets start with the Syracuse Crunch whom opened their season Friday Oct 1st with a loss to Rochester 6-4. Derick Brassard notched his first goal as a pro and Joakim Lindstrom, Steve Goertzen and Derick MacKenzie scored the other three. Thomas Popperlee got the start but after allowing 5 straight goals off of 8 shots was pulled in favor of Dan LaCosta. The Crunch made a game of it scoring the next 4 goals but it wasn't enough.

The Crunch followed that loss up with another one last night in a 3-2 loss to W-B/Scranton. Derick MacKenzie scored his second of the campaign with Geoff Platt notching his first. Thomas Popperlee got the start again and had a better outing stopping 25 of 28 shots but it ulitmately wasn't enough.

The Ohio Junior Blue Jackets also kicked off their season this past weekend. They opened the 2007-2008 season on the road against Green Bay. The swept both games against the Gamblers winning 5-4 on Friday night and 6-3 on Saturday. Pretty good start for a team that won only 13 of 60 games in last season.

There are also some Blue Jacket prospets off to very hot starts in the Canadian Major Junior leagues.

2007 2nd round pick Stefan Legein (pictured right) is the hottest of them all and is currently leading the entire OHL in scoring with 16 points (8g, 8a) in only 6 games played. That is one point better than super phenom John Tavares who if were to be eligible to be drafted this season would be a sure fire #1 overall pick. Legein had 43g, 32a for 75 points in 64 games all of last season. At this current pace he would shatter those totals and then some. I expect Legein to cool off a bit but may still break that 100 point total.

2007 first round pick Jakub Voracek is also off to a strong start in the QMJHL. In just 2 games played thus far Voracek has already rung up 1g and 6a for 7 points.

A good place for those that want to keep up with the Jackets propsects is to go to Hockeysfuture.com and look at their list of top prospects for the Blue Jackets. From there just google them or the league they play in and you can track their progress.

Finally one more quick note from Aaron Kramer's Syracuse Crunch blog:

Rookie power forward Tom Sestito has an injured hand that he hurt in a preseason fight with Buffalo's Andrew Peters. He's getting it checked out on Thursday.

-LTL