Kings look forward to upcoming season

 

Mario Prusina

Times Editor

 

There is optimism in the air as the Wheatland Kings prepare for the franchise’s third season in the Heritage Junior B Hockey League.

After Sunday afternoon’s Black & White game, which the dark jerseys won 5-3, head coach Doug Murphy and his staff faced some difficult decisions.

However, because of those difficult choices, there is a sense that the Kings have progressed to a team capable of making some noise in the league.

“(There is) a lot of young talent and a lot of the returning guys have stepped their game up,” said Murphy. “The guys are a year older and a year stronger – playing together for a third year … the guys know the systems and they know what we’re looking for and what we’re expecting of them.”

According to Murphy, now that the team is more experienced, cutting players is a much harder decision. After 32 players took part in the Black & White game, the Kings were expected to trim the roster by seven or eight players heading into the exhibition schedule. The Kings will then make their final cuts prior to the start of the regular season.

“It’s never an easy process,” said Murphy of the cuts. “Fortunately we have a lot longer to make our choices … we can carry enough players into the preseason and we can look at them in some exhibition games and see how it actually goes when they play another team, rather than against (their) buddies.”

After joining the league with a 10-20-4-2 record in their inaugural season, the Kings stumbled to 7-25-1-3 last season. However, after a couple of solid performances late in the year, the Kings are looking to build for the future.

“We’re looking to have a winning season this year,” he said. “In our first year, we competed and we showed well. Last year is a year we would like to forget – but it’s also a year to motivate us. We sort of turned a corner late in the year with a couple of great games to finish off (the season).

“It seems that’s where we’re picking up (right now).”

The Kings will open their preseason schedule this coming weekend with a home-and-home series with the Airdrie Thunder.

Wheatland will travel to Airdrie on Sept. 10 (8 p.m.), before returning home to face them on Sept. 11 (8 p.m.) at the Strathmore Family Centre