The geographic placement of the 12 teams in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League makes it tough to align them into divisions without making someone unhappy.
You have four basic clusters: Kindersley and Battlefords in the west; Humboldt, Melfort and Nipawin in the northeast; Yorkton and Melville in the east; and Estevan, Weyburn and Notre Dame in the southeast. Then you have La Ronge and Flin Flon way up there on their own, so remote that no alignment would cut down on their travel much.
You simply can't keep each cluster together without making at least one team's travel schedule hell.
Even under the current set-up, Kindersley and Battlefords are in separate divisions despite being the closest team to each other and being rivals.
But the league did about the best it can do under the new format, which will feature three divisions.
Yes, Humboldt is separated from Nipawin and Melfort and yes, Notre Dame got screwed, but I'm not sure how else you could split the teams up.
If you put the Hounds in with the Bruins and Wings, then you have to split up the Yorkton-Melville rivalry, something no one concerned about the league's bottom line should ever think is a good idea.
If you put the three northeast teams together, then you'd have to put the North Stars in the same division as La Ronge and Flin Flon, or something similarly foolish.
Sure, it would be ideal for the SJHL if the 12 teams were divided into three neatly arranged clusters around the province, but geography doesn't work that way. Just ask the NHL, which has teams in the Eastern time zone in the Western Conference.
The big winners in the new SJHL setup are clearly the Kindersley Klippers. I covered the Klippers for three seasons and their travel was atrocious. Their closest trip within the division was to Wilcox, a good four hours away, and the furthest, to Estevan, was six.
Humboldt made more sense to be in the south; even though they're further north than the Klippers, they are closer to the rest of the southern teams. Once the league decided either the Broncos or Klippers had to move to the south division, Humboldt did it for two years, but then they put up a fuss so Kindersley endured it for the next seven.
The Bruins can thank geography for being in the best division of the three travel-wise. Yorkton is only a three-hour trip away, and with probably the two best rivalries in the league, it should be an entertaining division.
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It was great to see the activity at the Estevan Curling Club over the weekend as the southern men's playdowns came to town.
Brent Gedak made sure the crowds continued right to the end, as he had to win the last game of the playdowns to grab the fifth and final berth into the provincial Tankard.
Gedak lasted two games on the A side and two on the B side, and it didn't look so good for him when he was knocked to the C side on Saturday.
That meant his team had to win three straight games to get in the backdoor. But as it turned out, they were never really challenged in any of them.
Facing a showdown with former teammate and 2009 provincial champion Joel Jordison, Gedak curled maybe his best game of the weekend and was in control from start to finish.
It helped that Jordison had an off-day, playing in his third final in less than 24 hours, but with the way the Gedak rink was playing on Sunday, I suspect they would have risen to the challenge no matter what was thrown at them.
Josh Lewis can be reached by phone at 634-2654, by e-mail at sports@estevanmercury.ca, on Twitter at twitter.com/joshlewis306 or on his Bruins blog at estevanmercury.ca/bruinsbanter. Can you believe that Joe Flacco has more playoff road wins than any other quarterback in NFL history? Don't worry, no one else can either.
