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Who is going to win the North American Hockey League's 2012 Robertson Cup?
The event takes place May 3-8 at the Dr. Pepper Arena in Frisco, Texas and is being hosted by Tony Curtale's Texas Tornado. Frisco is certainly a better venue than say, Bismarck, but everybody would have had a blast down in Corpus Christi. Oh well... that bid never had a shot.
The five division champions, and the Tornado, are all looking forward to a fantastic event with the winner taking home the hardware on May 8th.
The teams have been seeded and split into two pools. Amarillo (1), St. Louis (3), and Port Huron (5) are in the Pool A while Bismarck (2), Fairbanks (4), and Curtale's Tornado (6) are in Pool B.
The pool play schedule is a straight cross over with the top two teams in each pool advancing to the May 7th Semi-Finals.
Below is the line-up:
Pool A
#1 Amarillo Bulls (South Champion)
#3 St. Louis Bandits (Midwest Champion)
#5 Port Huron Fighting Falcons (North Champion)
Pool B
#2 Bismarck Bobcats (Central Champion)
#4 Fairbanks Ice Dogs (West Champion)
#6 Texas Tornado (host)
Robertson Cup Schedule (all times central)
Thursday May 3
Fairbanks vs. St. Louis, 12:30pm
Port Huron vs. Bismarck, 3:30pm
Texas vs. Amarillo, 7:30pm
Friday May 4
St. Louis vs. Bismarck, 12:30pm
Fairbanks vs. Amarillo, 3:30pm
Texas vs. Port Huron, 7:30pm
Saturday May 5
Bismarck vs. Amarillo, 12:30pm
Port Huron vs. Fairbanks, 3:30pm
Texas vs. St. Louis, 7:30pm
Monday May 7-Semi-Finals
A1 vs. A2, 3:30pm
B1 vs. B2, 7:30pm
Tuesday May 8
National Championship Game, 7:30pm
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the Fairbanks Ice Dogs are going to defend their championship and keep the Robertson Cup in Alaska. I am also going to preview (and try to predict the winners) each matchup as the Daily Dish every day of the event. Yes, this also means on Saturday.
As with every Robertson Cup finals, the NAHL's Board of Governors is set to meet and this weekend's gathering should be full of fireworks. Let's just go out on a limb and say that there will be more than a few sore backsides from the festivities.
We had discussions today with multiple parents of both the Bismarck Bobcats and Aberdeen Wings that will happily travel to Colorado Springs in June with a full accounting of everything they had to pay for this season. Personally, I'd like to see the Bobcats and Wings come out of the weekend unscathed because I've never seen the members of the junior council in such an uproar over any situation. The NAHL has a real problem in they go into the next Junior Council meeting without forcing Bismarck and Aberdeen into issuing refunds to every effected player.
I wonder what it is going to take to get a member of the BOG to accidently record the gathering?
What do you think?
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