Kings staying positive

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

After going 0-3 last weekend against some tough opponents, the Wheatland Kings went through a difficult stretch of games. However, the team remains positive and is working hard to get through their recent slump.
“The environment of the team is absolutely excellent,” said head coach Emilio Fuoco. “I know that they had three tough games. Our result should have been better if we would’ve played 60 minutes every game. We’ve had a lot of building and growing, lots of positives to come out of the weekend even though there was no points earned.”
For the last few weekends, the Kings faced a challenging schedule that had them playing games straight from Friday to Sunday. As a result the team was left exhausted when Sunday rolled around.
“(On Sunday), we probably played one of our better games all year,” said Fuoco.
“There are no more excuses and no more crutches. We just had to play 60 minutes, that’s really been our downfall in the last few games. Same thing against Mountainview, Airdrie, and the game in the Hat. If we play 60 minutes the way that we’re encouraging them to play, we’re going to have a tremendous amount of success.”
Additionally, Fouco knows more players have to be on board for a full game effort but at the same time feels there is a consistent effort coming forth.
“We need certain players to compete shift in, shift out,” he said. “That’s the whole problem of the situation is if we have one or two passengers, a team like ours isn’t going to see a lot of success. We need to have 20 players come prepared to play. I think after this weekend we’ve taken a big jump forward. I’m looking for some positive things to come.”
Fuoco said team discipline has been exceptional and there will always be situations where you’re going to lose an opportunity or somebody makes a mistake.
In the 5-4 loss to Medicine Hat on Oct. 23, Jacen Bracko, Cole Busslinger, Lucas Jones and Blake Bishop scored one each.
Bishop, Bracko, Tyler Rivest and Hayden Vanderploeg scored in the 7-4 defeat on home ice to Mountainview the next night.
On Sunday afternoon, Bracko, Rivest, Jones and Brendan Moore scored in the loss to Airdrie.
The Kings will get a well deserved break before they take to the ice again in High River on Nov. 6 at 8:15 p.m. before hosting Airdrie on Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. and Coaldale on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m.