The Selection Committee, made up of Chair, Gerald Janneteau, Michel Cote, Vincent Damphousse, Robert Basque and Bernard Valcourt, will be accompanied by Gilles Courteau, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Commissioner. There is a specific evaluation grid the committee will follow that includes major areas such as hockey operations, facilities, ticket sales and community support. The visit will play a major part in the decision making process of which location will host in 2012.
The Screaming Eagles have been fairly quiet about their bid of late compared to earlier this season. They set up a Facebook page about the event but went dark until today.
The front page of the Cape Breton Post today features Memorial Cup stuff:
The selection committee will be cruising around in a big bus today (the picture at the top was on the Eagles website). The team has asked all motorists that see the vichicle, which will have a Cape Breton 2012 logo on it, to honk their car horns in support.
“When they see the bus and the escort heading around town, just lay on the horn,” said Paul MacDonald, president of the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles to the Cape Breton Post.
“This visit is crucial to the process and this is our way of keeping the community involved.”
Neate Sager of Yahoo! Sports said it best in his coast-to-coast rush today: “Cape Breton's strategy for getting the 2012 MasterCard Memorial Cup as the selection committee tours Sydney, N.S.? Have motorists lay on their car horns, distracting the committee from checking the league standings.”
Those standings are what is likely going to keep the 2012 Memorial Cup out of Sydney. The city itself is certainly suitable to host the event, but the Eagles don’t appear to have a team that is going to be a powerhouse next season.
The Eagles made the puzzling decision last season to buy at the QMJHL trade deadline even though they were destined to play the eventual champion Moncton Wildcats in the opening round. Now, they sit in the basement of the standings and are clinging to the final playoff spot – and it’s not like they have a whole lot of assets to work with in order to vastly improve in time for next season.
Meanwhile, the selection committee is scheduled to visit Saint John tomorrow and Shawinigan on Friday.
In today’s Telegraph-Journal, the Saint John 2012 logo is explained. The bottom part is a must read, providing some quality information such as “the Sea Dogs logo is present as the host team for the Memorial Cup.”
One interesting part though was that “the bottom half of the logo was designed to easily transfer to the Memorial Cup logo so that it fits within the bottom portion of the Memorial Cup shield.”
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