My Saturday afternoon was spent on the campus of Deerfield Academy to watch the Big Green take on incoming recruit Mike Pereira and Avon Old Farms. While not huge, Pereira has good size at 5’11, 180lbs. He plays bigger than that though because he’s such a good skater. Not only does he posses great speed, which was shown numerous times in the game, but he’s extremely strong on his skates. There were very few times that Deerfield was able to knock him onto the ice without resorting to penalties, and that’s impressive considering they have a couple of 6’5″ guys on defense. Potentially he could be a force in front of the net and in the corners as he’ll be so tough to push off the puck.

He had very good vision of the ice on both offense and defense. I was happy to see him on the first penalty killing unit which hopefully means he could be an asset on defense. I didn’t see too much physical play for him but there was an instance early on where he completely levelled a Deerfield player along the boards to keep the puck in the offensive zone.

Offensively he certainly lived up to everything I had read to date. Exceptional stickhandling combined with his strong skating makes him extremely dangerous. At one point late in the game with the score tied he went completely coast to coast, barely touched, and almost put home the game winner. Overall he considers himself a playmaker, but I think he has the potential to be a key goalscorer for the Minutemen. He ended up with a lone goal in the 3-3 tie but it was a beauty. His center won a faceoff in the offensive zone, Pereira picked up the puck, and skated around the faceoff circle toward center ice. As soon as he came around the corner and had a straight view of the net he unleashed a nice wrister that when far top corner just a few inches below the crossbar. Skill goal. Assuming the two of them stay in school the prospect of Pereira on a line with James Marcou and Casey Wellman is enough to be cheerful about right now despite the team’s recent struggles.

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Speaking of Marcou and Wellman, the Republican’s Dick Baker writes that Toot needs to keep those two on the same line for UMass to be successful. In an effort to shake things up Toot put Wellman with TJ Syner and Will Ortiz and Marcou with Rocco Carzo and Danny Hobbs. At first I was going to refute Baker seeing as UMass actually got a whole three goals in the game including ones directly assisted by the two guys Toot split up. But Wellman only getting one shot on goal isn’t going to cut it, so perhaps putting them back together is the only choice at this point.

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Eric Filiou has recovered from mono and scored a couple goals for Penticton his weekend. Maybe he can give Doug Kublin some recovery pointers.

Colin Shea had 3 asssits to help the Junior Bruins win both of their games this weekend.

Conor Allen had a goal and an assist in three games for Sioux Falls this past week.

Kevin Boyle has not played since I watched him in the AJHL All-Star Game. He did not appear to get injured in that game.

Here’s a release the Rockets put out on Chris Delmauro heading out west to play in the USHL.

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In yet another ridiculous move by the International Olympic Committee, Jon Quick has been told to cover up the “Support The Troops” message on his Olympic mask. What a joke. Which is the more corrupt organization that has completely lost sight of their true mission; the NCAA or the IOC? I say it’s a tie.

According to the LA Times Quick will alternate with Tim Thomas as the backup to Ryan Miller. Team USA gets started today at 3pm EST against Switzerland.