It might not be a traditional AJHL September but it sure beats the alternative.
Faced with a development season with the Alberta Junior Hockey League postponing the start of its regular season, the Okotoks Jr. A Oilers are taking advantage of their time together knowing how quickly it can be taken away.
“You’ve got to remember last year and how we had to end our season and the disappointment of not competing, everyone does everything to be able to complete in playoffs,” said Oilers head coach Tyler Deis. “And not being able to have that and having a pretty tight group, they all like hanging out with each other.
“They were really excited to be back and be back with each other.”
It might be practice only at this point, but it’s a world of difference knowing they’re preparing and building for a season rather than the dejection and sense of unknown that came in the spring months, the coach added.
“It’s still tough what we’re going through, but it’s not that March, April, May,” Deis said. “They’re actually on the ice, they’re working on their craft and getting better. It’s still not ideal, but it’s definitely a lot better.”
Deis said there’s a chance exhibition games could begin mid-October, noting there’s no guarantees given the current climate.
“It’s awesome just to be back at the rink and around all of the guys again,” said Oilers winger Zane Kindrachuk, entering his fourth year with the club. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other so just being around them in the room has been good and then on the ice we’ve been able to do a lot of skill development stuff and I think that will be beneficial for us when we do start playing again.”
Kindrachuk said the team has kept the competitive juices flowing with scrimmages and cross-ice 3-on-3 games.
“We’ve brought them in and done a bunch of small games for the first week,” said head coach Tyler Deis. “And then we’ve done skill development profiles with them, so we went through with every kid and talked about areas of improvement or areas that they want to improve in within their skills.
“And the last two weeks we’ve done individual skill work with each of these guys. Once we can get a little closer understanding of when we can start playing games then we’ll start doing a little more tactics and system stuff and running our team how we want to be run.”
In the absence of games to prepare for and evaluate from, it’s about finding the right mix of structure and enjoyment during this period of development.
“I think we’ve done a good mixture of not too much of one thing to keep us engaged with the skill development and with that we’re also mixing in games with little prizes on the line to make it fun,” Kindrachuk said. “As we get a date for the season we will get back to normal, more battle drills and stuff like that to get ready for the games.”
And if you have the right athletes, you can manufacture that game-type competitiveness in a practice environment.
“I think you can if you get the right kind of group around and I think we have that,” Deis said. “Where it’s a focused group and they want to compete against each other daily and get better with that. I think that’s one of the main things, the competitiveness within the team that drives you to be individually better.”
Improving upon last year’s first place in the South showing would be a challenge for any team, but the early signs are positive amongst the players.
New additions — a talented rookie class including forwards Rieger Lorenz, Bowden Singleton, Dean Spak, Nolan Flint, and defenceman Logan Magowan — haven’t looked out of place on the Pason Centennial Arena ice.
“We had a really strong team last year and we only lost a couple guys, but those guys played big roles for us,” said Kindrachuk, a Niagara University commit. “I think with the guys coming back we’ll have a little more experience and will be ready to step into those roles and with the new guys coming in, what we’ve seen so far is they’ve all really impressed me with how good they area and how fast they are.
“I think we had a really good team last year and we might even have a better team this year.”
For more information go to okotoksoilers.ca.
