Our man Jeremiah Bartz at The Frontiersman has a breaking story that reports the North American Hockey League's Palmer-based Alaska Avalanche appear to be on the move.

Jeremiah reports owner Mark Lee has requested to the league the franchise be relocated and sold, and he's talking to folks in Johnstown, Pa., about the possibility of the franchise moving there.

Loaded Las Vegas -- the Wranglers' top two lines will get a goaltender's attention -- jumped to a 2-0 series lead in its best-of-7, ECHL Western Conference semifinal series with the Idaho Steelheads with tonight's 3-2 win in overtime.

Scott Campbell scored just 91 seconds into OT off helpers from Chris Francis and Geoff Paukovich -- and that's the Wranglers' third line, folks.

The other Las Vegas goals came from former UAA Seawolves winger Josh Lunden and Peter MacArthur, both back this week from the AHL.

Anchorage's Ryan Luiten and UAA recruit Dylan Nowakowski, both of whom play for the Brooks Bandits of the Alberta Junior Hockey League, are champions -- the Bandits captured the Enerflex Cup over the weekend as playoff champs of the circuit.

But the boys are done chasing hardware. Next up is the Doyle Cup, which pits the Bandits against the Pentiction Vees, champions of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League.

The story going around today about the Alabama football team's BSC trophy getting accidentally knocked off a case and smashed prompted ESPN to do a round-up of other trophies that have been damaged.

The Las Vegas Wranglers opened their ECHL Western Conference semifinal series Monday night with a 3-1 win over visiting Idaho to get the jump on the Steelheads in the best-of-7 series.

Idaho goaltender Jerry Kuhn gave his team a chance on a night it was outshot 46-18 -- he stopped 43 shots; Scott Campbell's empty-net goal was his second strike of the night for the Wranglers, who swept Utah in three games in the first round.

The Peoria Rivermen failed to qualify for the AHL playoffs, and that has freed rookie winger Chris Bruton and rookie defenseman David Shields to rejoin the Alaska Aces heading into Wednesday night's Game 3 of their ECHL Western Conference semifinal series with Stockton.

Bruton and Shields will meet the team in Stockton on Tuesday, Aces coach Rob Murray said.

Bruton earned 6-7--13 and +4 totals, with 60 penalty minutes, in 27 games with the Aces. In 38 games for Peoria, he was 2-3--5 and -7 with 66 PIMs.

The North American Hockey League's Palmer-based Alaska Avalanche have still never won a playoff series after their 2-1 OT loss Saturday night to visiting Wenatchee in decisive Game 5 in Palmer.

Wenatchee forward Evan Schmidbauer, who scored all of one goal in 51 regular-season games, bagged with winner at 8:46 of OT to give the Wild the series win that advances them into the West Division Finals against the reigning league champion Fairbanks Ice Dogs, who swept the Kenai River Brown Bears in three games.

Emptying the notebook after the Stockton Thunder's 3-2 OT win Saturday night over the Alaska Aces, which evened the best-of-7, ECHL Western Conference semifinal series at 1-1:

The Aces' loss snapped their seven-game, home-ice winning streak at Sullivan Arena. They were 6-0 there last year on the way to the Kelly Cup and won 2-1 in Friday's opener. The last playoff loss on real home ice (not counting two games in Wasilla vs. Stockton in 2010) was a 4-2 loss to South Carolina in Game 7 of the 2009 Kelly Cup Finals.

It's late here, gotta pack up and bolt, so here's the game story that will be in Sunday's dead-trees edition of the ADN:

Eyebrow-raising moments abounded -- from a ninja kick save for the ages to an improbable breakaway and even a long-range crossbar kisser at the buzzer ending regulation – but Saturday night’s delicious ECHL playoff hockey game at Sullivan Arena ended on a note of normalcy.

Chris D’Alvise delivered a dagger.

The Blog sees that our man Scott Howes, the reigning Kelly Cup MVP, is a scratch again tonight for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers -- team motto: The best two teams Islanders money can buy for cheap -- and that of course makes us wonder if we might see him back with the Alaska Aces at some point.

The Peoria Rivermen of the American Hockey League just more than three weeks ago sat in first place in the Midwest Division, yet tonight they could be eliminated from playoff contention.

This is of interest to Alaska Aces fans because two players currently with the Rivermen -- rookie winger Chris Bruton and rookie defenseman David Shields are eligible to play for Alaska in the ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs, which the Aces launched Friday night with a 2-1 win over Stockton.

Well, that was a decent ending if you're an Alaska Ace, or an Aces fan.

Down 1-0 when a scoreless tie finally was broken midway through the third period tonight at Sullivan Arena, the Aces raced back on an equalizer from Dan Kissel and the game-winning strike from Garry Nunn to take a 2-1 victory in the ECHL Western Conference semifinals.

The best-of-7 series continues Saturday night at Sullivan.

The Aces hailed their fans. The announced crowd of 4,872 was about 1,500 shy of a sellout, but was nonetheless quite loud.

Wandered down to the rink to check out the morning skates for the Alaska Aces and Stockton Thunder before tonight's Game 1 in the ECHL best-of-7 Western Conference semifinals.

Here's the Aces' lineup:

Kissel-Swanson-Goldie
Mazzolini-Cruthers-Nunn
Hall-Harrison-Kremyr
Langkow

Lafranchise-Miller
Ward-Gentile
Anderson-Marsh

Coleman
Reid

Scratches: Markowitz, Shelgren.

Aces coach Rob Murray confirmed center Chris Langkow, who missed the last three games of the regular season (concussion symptoms) will start the night as the 10th forward.

Anchorage winger Joey Crabb, coming off a career season with the Toronto Maple Leafs, will join his pal Nate Thompson of the Tampa Bay Lightning with Team USA at the World Championships, USA Hockey announced today.

Nice reward for both guys.

Crabb, who turned 29 earlier this month, this season racked 11-15--26 totals and a +1 in 67 games.

The World Championships are May 4-20 in Finland and Sweden.

Defenseman Matt Carle of Anchorage furnished a helping hand tonight on the game-winning overtime strike that delivered the Philadelphia Flyers a 4-3 playoff-opening win at Pittsburgh, which led 3-0 after one period.

That's a wrap on the AHL regular season for former UAA and Alaska Aces winger Justin Johnson (J.J. to everyone) -- the league today suspended him for the Manchester Monarchs' last three games of the regular season for his part in a dust-up with the Worcester Sharks during warm-ups Tuesday night.

Also involved were Worcester's Frazer McLaren (suspended three games), Manchester's Richard Clune (suspended one game) and Worcester's Curt Gogol (suspended one game).

Nice pat on the back today for Tampa Bay Lightning center Nate Thompson of Anchorage, who was one of 17 players USA Hockey announced on its preliminary roster for the World Championships next month in Finland and Sweden.

Believe this will be the first time Thompson, 27, has represented his country in international play.

Thompson's team didn't make the NHL playoffs. He put up 9-6--15 and -23 totals in 68 games this season.

Thompson has played four full seasons in the NHL and logged 265 career games for the Lightning, Islanders and Bruins.

A time or two every hockey season, The Blog likes to keep it real and hunt down dudes with Alaska connections who are playing puck abroad, and we've sniffed around the series of tubes a few times over the last week or so to discover: (OK, sure, The Blog just cruised eliteprospects.com a few times, but it kept you from having to stare at numbers until your eyes bled.) So, here goes (for real, and very random -- i.e. we didn't include every dude with some scant Alaska connection because we got tired of writing stuff down):

The semifinals are set in the Central Hockey League playoffs -- Fort Wayne eliminated Rapid City 4-3 in OT in Game 6 and Texas beat Allen 4-2 in Game 6 to advance -- and we still have some Alaska connections alive in that postseason.

UAF is stockpiling another recruit, getting a commitment from defenseman J.D. Peterson of the USHL's Tri-City Storm, according to both that league and Chris Heisenberg's excellent website.

Peterson, 20, will join the Nanooks in the fall. He's put up 2-12--14 and -11 totals in 55 games this season.

He's from Orange, Calif., but is probably fairly well informed about Alaska because he plays with several Alaskans at Tri-City: Dartmouth-bound forward Brad Schierhorn of Anchorage; defenseman Bryan Sinz of Anchorage; and UAF-bound forward Jared Linnell of North Pole.