Julian, congrats on the win! Can't wait to take Despres off your handsAlthough our D-corps are quite crowded at the moment...still, Despres is world class talent, and seriously close to NHL ready, and I'm absolutely PUMPED to watch him play up here.
Here you go! From a game this year where the Sea Dogs wore Saint John Flames jerseys to honour the 10th anniversary of their Calder Cup win.
and he was the guy that was late on the backcheck on MIS' 3 on 2 goal
The QMJHL will play with 17 teams for 2011-2012. And then strangely enough the rumour is they will be expanding to Sherbrooke for 2012-2013. It seems strange that they don't just relocate the team to Sherbrooke instead of having a dispersal draft and then turning around and having an expansion draft a year later. I've read about 2 possible reasons for this. One, as previously mentioned, is that the franchise came from Sherbrooke and the owner left on bad terms so they are looking for a new ownership group. The other is that Sherbrooke needs a year before they have a suitabe building. 
Okay so it looks like I gave you some wrong information earlier in this thread. With my team playing for and winning the Memorial Cup I wasn't following this story as closely as I might have been otherwise.
It appears the Maineiacs are indeed folding and a dispersal draft will be happening soon.
I'm not sure if this could be part of the reasoning too or just an added bonus, but as hosts the QMJHL will be sending 2 teams to the Memorial Cup next year. Within the QMJHL a dispersal draft won't really help the stronger teams because the weaker teams will be picking ahead of them, so it helps everyone else close the gap. But where the strong teams would benefit is once they get to the Memorial Cup tournament, since all QMJHL teams will be adding some depth if nothing else while the teams from the other leagues will remain unaffected. Going from 18 to 17 teams isn't likely to do too much for the teams picking late but could make them a bit stronger.
Now how this will all affect Kabanov will be interesting to see how it plays out. Kabanov is 1 of the elite players on the Maineiacs roster but he is 19 and likely only has 1 year left in the QMJHL and rosters are limited to only 2 European players. So its likely that several players that aren't as good as Kabanov will get picked ahead of him because the difference would have to be enough to make it worthwhile to use 1 of the 2 Euro spots. Plus as mentioned he is 19. The teams picking early in the dispersal draft are likely rebuilding and looking 2 or 3 years down the road. They might be interested in drafting a talented 19 year old Canadian or American kid with the expectation of trading him, but Europeans can sometimes be hard to trade and/or get good value for because of the previously mentioned limitations.
GMs are really going to earn their paychecks with this draft. Its not as simple as taking the best player available as they would usually do with the midget and euro drafts because instead of having a pool of players of approximately the same age from which to pick, there will be players ranging from 16 to 20 years old and they have to decide how these players would fit into their long-term plans.
Okay so it looks like I gave you some wrong information earlier in this thread. With my team playing for and winning the Memorial Cup I wasn't following this story as closely as I might have been otherwise.
It appears the Maineiacs are indeed folding and a dispersal draft will be happening soon.
I'm not sure if this could be part of the reasoning too or just an added bonus, but as hosts the QMJHL will be sending 2 teams to the Memorial Cup next year. Within the QMJHL a dispersal draft won't really help the stronger teams because the weaker teams will be picking ahead of them, so it helps everyone else close the gap. But where the strong teams would benefit is once they get to the Memorial Cup tournament, since all QMJHL teams will be adding some depth if nothing else while the teams from the other leagues will remain unaffected. Going from 18 to 17 teams isn't likely to do too much for the teams picking late but could make them a bit stronger.
Now how this will all affect Kabanov will be interesting to see how it plays out. Kabanov is 1 of the elite players on the Maineiacs roster but he is 19 and likely only has 1 year left in the QMJHL and rosters are limited to only 2 European players. So its likely that several players that aren't as good as Kabanov will get picked ahead of him because the difference would have to be enough to make it worthwhile to use 1 of the 2 Euro spots. Plus as mentioned he is 19. The teams picking early in the dispersal draft are likely rebuilding and looking 2 or 3 years down the road. They might be interested in drafting a talented 19 year old Canadian or American kid with the expectation of trading him, but Europeans can sometimes be hard to trade and/or get good value for because of the previously mentioned limitations.
GMs are really going to earn their paychecks with this draft. Its not as simple as taking the best player available as they would usually do with the midget and euro drafts because instead of having a pool of players of approximately the same age from which to pick, there will be players ranging from 16 to 20 years old and they have to decide how these players would fit into their long-term plans.
