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Revamped Raiders ready for puck drop

Hockey: Rocky Mountain opens regular season on Halloween

A veteran group will look to shepherd the Rocky Mountain Raiders to new heights this season.

The 18UAAA Rocky Mountain Raiders skate into the 2020-21 campaign in the Alberta Female Hockey looking to build on their strongest year in three seasons.

“We’re third year deep and we’re really starting to see a maturity out of our players,” said Raiders head coach Dustin Borbandy. “Just how they filter that to the rest of the team, to the first years and second years. It’s quite enjoyable to watch them with that year under their belt where they’re now at the top, where it’s your last year of minor hockey and you’ve earned that right.

“It’s nice to watch.”

The AFHL season will follow the cohort model seen in most competitive leagues in which two teams square off over a condensed period of time followed by a two-week hiatus before moving onto new opposition.

“The unknown was really scary and once we got the word that we were going ahead people were just excited to be able to be back together,” the coach added. “We strive hard on building a good culture and having good community and the kids are really excited to be back together to be able to be face to face and have those conversations and enjoy each other’s company again and to be back on the ice competing.”

The Raiders will renew their regional rivalry with the Calgary Fire for their first six games over a 16-day period with the home and season opener set for Oct. 31 at Pason Centennial Arena Green.

“We, and I’m pretty sure the league in general, are going to be focusing on a lot of skill development,” Borbandy said. “When we play a team six times in a row I don’t think we’re really building to play against that team, we still want to adapt to who we’re playing but not losing sight of making sure we’re developing that skill-set for each player.

“When you play a team six times, you can easily go ‘we lose one, we’ve got to make sure we win, we’re going to adapt and do this and this,' which is okay, but because of the type of season we’re having we want to make sure we’re still focusing on developing these kids to get them to the next level.”

The Raiders feature a good balance of incumbents and new faces in the lineup with eight returners up-front, three on defence and one in goal in Ali Kieren.

“We’ve always built our program based on us wanting to have players come to our program, we want to build a good reputation — with the no borders, you can go recruit, but at the end of the day I just want to make sure who’s coming through our doors really wants to be there,” Borbandy said.

“We’ve got four first years from our Bantam (Raiders) program, that’s really exciting, they’re doing some great things in our AA program in the Elite U18 stream. I think even in a couple more years everything will be stronger.”

The rookie class includes Heritage Pointe’s Kaci McInenly at forward, Okotoks blueliner Jordynne Hojnocki and Okotokian Reilly Crowson, who joins her cousin Caylee, a second-year Raider on the squad, all coming up from the Raiders U15 team. Other newcomers include Bailey Fiala out of the Calgary Fire program and Madison Siemens out of the Delta Hockey Academy.

“I would just really give a shout out to our entire team,” Borbandy said. “The fact our first years are buying in, they’re understanding and just want to work and get better, our second years they’re just enjoyable to watch, they’re eager and our third years – very impressed with them, their overall care about wanting to have success as a group.”

Underscoring the team’s experience, five members of this year’s Rocky Mountain squad already boast post-secondary commitments with Kallie Clouston headed to the University of Alberta, Fiala to University of Manitoba, Claire Hobbs to MacEwan, Isobel Pettem-Shand to Indiana Tech and Okotoks’ Jordyn Matthews committed to Trinity Western.

The Raiders enjoyed a strong 2019-20 campaign with a 30-point improvement from its previous season and a third-place finish in the regular season. The team’s bid to advance to the provincial tournament was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m hoping to see the players have a little bit more success with us being so deep now, looking for everyone to contribute, line by line,” the coach added. “I know we had a good season, but it’s hard to see what we looked like last year because of COVID, but really I’m hoping we come out of the gates strong.”

In the AFHL U18AA ranks, the Rocky Mountain Raiders open the regular season on Nov. 14 to kick-off a four-game set versus the Southern Express.

The U15AA Rocky Mountain Raiders get things underway on Nov. 13 in a four-game set of their own versus the Express.

For more information go to afhl.ca


Remy Greer

About the Author: Remy Greer

Remy Greer is the assistant editor and sports reporter for westernwheel.ca and the Western Wheel newspaper. For story tips contact [email protected]
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