The drop of the puck

Times Editor  

 

The quest for the Telus Cup began this past weekend, as the UFA Bison opened their rookie camp Sept. 1 at the Strathmore Family Centre.

The local triple-A midget squad had 92 rookies hit the ice, with an eye on making it to the main camp and eventually earning a spot on the 2012-2013 roster.

“There are obviously some things to build off of,” said Bisons head coach Jeremy Friesen. “We’ve seen some positive things already – our sessions got better and better as we went along, which is a (great) thing. We’ve told the guys we have 20 openings on the roster and we’re going to give them to the 20 guys that earn them. It starts today and we’re looking for guys that get better and better as the camp goes along.”

After the rookie camp, which ended on Sunday, approximately half of the kids earned a spot on the main camp, which ran from Sept. 4-7.

According to Bisons manager Wayne Hansen, there were approximately 100 players invited to the main camp.

“We’re going to want to be around that 100 number for main camp,” said Hansen. “The reason we keep those numbers is that it’s too hard on the kids, a lot of ice time in a short period of time. So if we cut our number down too much, we start to run them down and then you run into injury problems.

“We just need to avoid that.”

After the final cuts are made from main camp, Hansen anticipates that 44 players will make it to the annual Red & White game, which is Sept. 9 at the Strathmore Family Centre.

According to Friesen, despite the potential of returning players from last year’s squad, nothing is etched in stone.

“Every year is a fresh start and you take everything you’ve learned and implement it and do some things different – you try and duplicate the things you did well,” said Friesen. “All in all, it’s a brand new season and we could have nine guys back or we could have zero. Out of those nine guys, nobody (can take their sport for granted). 

“Obviously we don’t have a spot for everybody, but we can start forecasting and giving these guys feedback and things they can work on to eventually earn a spot.”

Despite only getting a quick glimpse of his potential future players, Friesen can already see players who can fit into different roles.

“We’re going to make a couple of adjustments in our defensive role strategy (this season) and a little bit of special teams stuff,” he said. “For the main part, the teaching principals are the same. We want to teach something that the junior programs are using.”