It will likely be both trick and treat when the Bisons open their regular season.
The Okotoks Junior B Bisons are set to open the Heritage Junior Hockey League regular season on Halloween in Strathmore on the heels of a four-game sweep over the Wheatland Kings through exhibition.
“I thought we played quite well in spurts and not so well in some others, but all in all I thought we did okay,” said Bisons general manager Ryan Rarick. “We certainly need to clean some things up in our own end and I think those will be things we work on in the next couple weeks.
“We have a lot of rookies this year, a lot of new faces, and I thought they played quite well.”
Okotoks won by 6-4 and 3-1 scores on Oct. 16 and 17 to close exhibition play with a record of 4-0 versus Strathmore.
It’s a team they will continue to get to know quite well.
The HJHL regular season will feature five four-game series against only Southern Division opponents. After each four-game set the two teams that make up the cohort will break for a couple weeks before moving into a new cohort.
“That’s probably something you see in all leagues because AHS requires that 14-day break between playing another cohort now,” Rarick said. “What potentially could happen is they increase the cohort size so if that happens you might have another team you could be allowed to play in that timeframe. But our league, rather than waiting, centres like Okotoks you can’t wait forever to book the ice. The Town has been more than lenient this season.”
Building off a tremendous 2019-20 season cut short by the pandemic in the playoffs, the Bisons have had a lot of interest from prospective players for a variety of reasons.
“Everything just feels different, it’s not like the evaluation is any different, just the whole atmosphere in the arena,” Rarick said. “It wasn’t any more difficult recruiting players, actually there is players that call every day, there’s a lot of players that maybe might have went to play out of province and decided not to this year.
“We’re still getting calls like that almost every day.”
The calls are increasingly coming from local area codes.
The 2020-21 Bisons will be among the most Okotoks player heavy teams in recent memory.
“I think the year that I started we probably only had three or four local players and this year we’ve got 18 or 19 and even the ones who aren’t from Okotoks have ties to Okotoks,” Rarick said. “I know that’s something I’m proud of and I think we all are.
“There’s a lot of good hockey players in our area and we try our best to fill those spots first locally, but that doesn’t mean that if we have someone calling from Calgary that’s a really high-end player it’s not that we’re not going to take them.”
The Bisons will feature a number of returning faces, particularly among the forward and goaltending positions with Devin Reagan and Casey Thomson back on the last line of defence and the likes of Tyson Scott, Tyler Witzke, Tyson Laduke and Evan Woods up front.
“We do have a lot of depth at forward, a lot of local kids, and our goaltending is really strong with both Devin and Casey coming back I personally feel they’re the top two goalies in the league,” the GM said. “Defence we lost a lot of the players that either aged out or weren’t able to return, we lost a lot of good players on the back-end. We have a good coaching staff and Tyson (Arnholtz) is going to be working with those defencemen.
“We’re going to be really strong again this year, and having all these 2002s that came in this year we’re going to be really strong moving forward, too.”
Okotoks’ depth should be further strengthened by some flexibility with regards to carding. Unlike in past year’s, teams will be allowed to keep 25 player rosters.
“I think they’re going to allow 25 all year,” Rarick said. “That’s probably partly because of COVID itself and kids missing. We’ve had kids that when they’re not feeling well they can’t come and have to go and get a test and get a negative result and for symptoms to subside. We’ve had kids miss already for that reason. And also because of the COVID rules I don’t know when or if they’re going to open affiliation. I think for those two reasons they’re allowing us to carry that 25 all year.”
The full HJHL regular season schedule has not yet been released.
For more information go to okotoksbisons.com
