Bisons trim

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The CFR Bisons started training camp with 102 players and trimmed down to 46 for the red and white game, held on Sept. 13, and at the conclusion of that they are now down to 34 players heading into the exhibition tournament this weekend.
Bison head coach Sandy Henry had watched many talented players come through camp and he said it made the coaching staff’s decisions that much tougher to make.
“I think there was some agreement certainly that it was probably one of the better ones we’ve ever had as far as the skill level,” said Henry. “I think how close guys are together and how hard it was to separate them. We spent a lot time on guys, just trying to sort them out just because there were things that we liked about every guy there, but unfortunately eventually you got to get it down to a workable number.”
Henry viewed the red and white game from the media booth and said the pace looked fine, but coaches that were at ice level thought the game was fast-paced. He appreciated the comments that were made in the interview process after the game.
“The feedback I got back from a lot of the players when we were interviewing them that the pace had gone up a lot even from main camp,” said Henry. “That’s encouraging for us. That’s what we had hoped it would do and it helped us sort guys out a little bit when that pace went up.
“It left some guys behind and not that they’re bad players, it’s just that they weren’t used to that pace and weren’t quite capable of making their expectation.”
He hopes the decisions that were made will not come back and haunt the team, but sees a lot of potential with the players that were selected to move on into exhibition games with the club.
“We are really excited with the group we got,” he said. “We got size, we skate really well, and team speed looks real good. Honestly, we haven’t really added our vets in yet. I’m really enthused to see what this week looks like and actually get to play some different teams for a change.”
The coaching staff now will seize the opportunity to move into the dressing room and communicate with the players on a consistent basis … to get to know one another better.
This will allow the staff to see what players are best suited to play with each other.
“I think last year, the character of our team was huge, how they managed and what kind of personalities we have,” said Henry.
A factor that made main camp more interesting was the strong core of players born in 2000 that seem to have caught the eyes of the brass, who have chosen to take five of them. Henry said they have pushed the older guys on the team.
“First of all we had a lot of them try-out in rookie camp,” said Henry. “A lot of them got through to main camp. It’s an extremely skilled group in the entire draw zone. In the Bison draw zone there is a huge peak and there’s lots of big guys that can skate with skill and even the mid-size guys, they’ve been a difficult group to sort out. In one respect they’ve made it more difficult and it’s hard to keep a lot of them.”
He stressed that once a lot of those players are 16, the organization’s job will become a lot harder to send guys home from that group.
The Bisons will hold their annual invitational tournament this weekend that began on Sept. 17 (6:30 p.m.), against the Red Deer Chiefs (result not available as of press time).
They will then play host to the Calgary Northstars on Sept. 18 (5:30 p.m.) and the Calgary Buffaloes on Sept. 19 (11:45 a.m.).
The playoff round will be played later on the 19th and 20th.