Wednesday afternoon link-o-rama: Badger Men

• Here's another Matt Paape article, this time from the Appleton Post-Crescent.

• Ryan MacMurchy, who was in Edmonton for training camp, has been reassigned to Springfield. Springfield's training camp starts today. In a post last week, Todd had a bit more on MacMurchy (who apparently suffered a concussion at the end of last season), as well as a list of Badgers at training camps.

• Todd Milewski is running a little contest where readers can pick the WCHA final standings and award winners.


• WCH has a scouting report for the U17 NTDP team at the NAHL showcase, and it includes a bit about a couple of future Badgers, Michael Mersch and Frankie Simonelli:
  

Line 3: Stuart Higgins-Matt Rust-Michael Mersch
A very high energy line featuring two sparkplugs in Higgins and Rust. Mersch gives the line a bit of a scoring threat, as demonstrated by the wicked shot he scored with on Wednesday, but most of the team's scoring will likely come from elsewhere.

The Defense: Kevin Clare, Adam Clendening, Stephen Johns, Frankie Simonelli, Justin Faulk, Jarred Tinordi
Clare was pretty obviously the leader of this group. Having played junior hockey last year, he looked most comfortable against the older competition. I was a little skeptical of Simonelli being on the team after seeing him last fall, but he really took a big step forward over the past year and should be one of the team's better defensemen. Clendening is a pretty exciting offensive defenseman. On Friday, when they lost both Simonelli and Clendening, the quality of the defense definitely went down.

• I've added a couple of links in the recruiting section on the left of the blog -- No Sleep Til Madison (thanks Allan!) and Wiscohockey, both of which cover high school hockey in Wisconsin.