A: While having the affiliation means that you sacrifice some autonomy over your roster, the hope is that for at least a significant portion of the season the affiliate has provided your team with players that have potential to play at the next level and are maybe even better players than you can recruit yourself.

We have the affiliation so we can have players like Dan Sexton, Justin Pogge, MacGregor Sharp and others come through here and help us win hockey games and build up a 13-point lead in the division before Christmas.

Throughout the course of the season, you never know which ones we're going to lose and which ones will be here most of the season, such as Chad Painchaud last year, or Connor James a few years back. Questions about this are understandable since we've never dealt with these issues in past seasons here in Condorstown. But other teams have dealt with this for years, and they have proven that the affiliation is a key to success. After all, nobody is dropping their affiliates so they can go back to being independent.

We've enjoyed seeing Dan Sexton acheive in the NHL this year, and like the fact that we saw him here as a Condor. How many other future NHLers will we see in the coming years thanks to the affiliation? With 30 games left in the season, there is no way of knowing that we won't get players back or perhaps even get other players as the season progresses. There is plenty of hockey to be played!

The Mailbag Guy

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