Highs and Lows

Odessa Jackalopes netminder Juha Toivonen became the CHL's first repeat weekly honoree today, as he was named Goaltender of the Week for games played Nov. 24-30.

Toivonen has certainly been impressive in net this season, especially for a 21-year old in his first season of North American hockey. He's had a couple off games, but last week was pretty good to him as he went 3-0-0 in three starts, including a shutout of the Corpus Christi IceRays. Overall, he saved 63 of the 67 shots he faced for a 2.0 goals-against average and a .940 save percentage.

Tulsa Oilers forward Jeff Christian earned the Player of the Week honors with his eight points in three games during that span, which included the Oilers' first hat trick of the season. He had multiple points in each of the Oilers' games last week and earned the weekly honors in spite of the Oilers going winless in those contests.

Christian has kind of been all over the place in his 18-year professional career and played in 18 NHL games, including a career-high 11-game stint with the 1996-97 Pittsburgh Penguins. He also won the IHL's John Cullen Award (basically comeback player of the year) with the Houston Aeroes in 1998-99.

Meanwhile, the CHL blogosphere is abuzz with talk about the hit on Trevor Weisgerber over the weekend. I've watched the video a couple times but am not going to post it here for several reasons.

Obviously, different people are going to have different opinions on a situation like this. You can read the blogs from Killer Bees Vice President of Communications Rich Bocchini, Killer Bees beat writer Brian Sandalow and Corpus Christi IceRays beat writer Greg Rajan, but ultimately, it's up to the league to decide if there was anything wrong about what this currently nameless Wichita Thunder player did.

Sandalow also has an update on Weisgerber, who was at, but obviously did not participate in, practice today and shared his thoughts on the incident.

"It's not a very good thing, that's for sure," Weisgerber said. "It kind of made my stomach sick, actually."

The Bees share that sentiment, and coach Chris Brooks said he sent footage of the incident to the league on Sunday for review.

Hits to the head have been just about the biggest issue plaguing the NHL this season, so it's no surprise to see things of a similar nature trickle down to the minor leagues. Ironically enough, typing and thinking about this is giving me a headache. Feel free to share your thoughts on this situation while I try to collect mine.

UPDATE: Bob Hoffman has released his "Shots from the Point" for today, which mention something I haven't spoken much about...as in Jeff Bes' 15-game point streak. Bes has only four goals this season but has collected 27 assists. Funny how things have changed with him on a line with a skilled center rather than a winger who anticipated his every move.