After an off-season full of roster turnover on the Okotoks Oilers’ defence corps the Junior A club will be glad to have the steadying force of a veteran blueliner returning to the lineup.
Oilers defenceman Rhett Holland is back with Okotoks’ Alberta Junior hockey League (AJHL) club after missing the final 29 games of the regular season and all of the playoffs due to a shoulder injury.
“It’s pretty nice to be back,” said Holland, one of just three returning Oilers on defence. “It took me a little while to get my confidence and my game sharpness back because I haven’t played in a while, but I’m a 100 per cent healthy now.”
Holland said he’s been on the ice for approximately six weeks and spent some of his summer skating with Crash Conditioning in Calgary.
The 17-year-old defenceman is entering his draft year and has been mentioned by online scouting services as one of the AJHL players most likely to be selected at the 2012 NHL Entry Draft.
“It’s something you try not to think about, but it’s pretty hard not to,” said Holland on being an NHL prospect. “I’ve got to go out there every night knowing that there’s going to be a lot of people watching. I’ve just got to not worry about it too much and see what happens.”
Holland committed to play at Michigan State University of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association in March and was expected to play for the NCAA club this fall, but decided to remain in the AJHL for one more season.
The Oilers are lucky to have the six-foot-one, 212-pound blueliner around for another year.
Okotoks defenceman Sasha Larocque said the Oilers missed the presence of Holland on the back-end especially in the playoffs.
“He’s obviously a good player,” Larocque said. “We had a lot of good players last year, but we missed him quite a bit when he was out.”
“I’m sure he’ll be the leader on defence, if not one of them,” Larocque said. “It’s his draft year and everyone’s looking for him to have a strong season.
“He’s a big strong guy and uses his size to his advantage.”
Holland will be leaned on more heavily this year as blueliners Matt Strong, Nick Bell and Colten Hayes, the league’s top scoring defenceman in 2010-11, graduated from the Oilers after 2010-11 and moved on to collegiate hockey.
Looking ahead to the Oilers’ 2011-12 season, Holland said he is excited with the prospects of increased responsibility.
“It’s great experience. I’ll get to play a lot of minutes this year and take a leadership role and learn a lot this year by playing a lot of big minutes,” he said.
“It should be an exciting year.”
