The Big Six Hockey League regular season will open with one new team, one somewhat relocated team, a new defending champion and a trio of games on Nov. 4.
The Carlyle PureChem Cougars kickoff the 2016-17 season and their first in the Big Six Hockey League since 2012-13 with a home game against the league champion Wawota Flyers on the first Friday of November. The Flyers captured the title with a 4-1 championship series win over the Bienfait Coalers, marking the first time since the 2010-11 season that a team other than the Coalers will enter the year as the reigning champ.
“It was a tough battle,” said Flyers manager Don Horvath. “Bienfait had been on the top of the mountain for five years. It was very tough to knock them off. They're a strong strong team and they'll be strong again this year. We consider ourselves fortunate. We did a lot of things right last year and things sort of fell into place. Whether that happens again this year is another story. That's why we play the games.”
Horvath said the Flyers will return a majority of their players this winter including last year's Big Six Hockey League leading scorer Riley Ridell as well as top-five point producers Justin Lamontagne and Brent Struble. He said they have lost a few important pieces such as retiring goaltender Adam Jordan, who led the league in wins and goals against average last season, and scorer Ben Johnstone who will be playing for the Cougars this season.
“We scored a lot of goals last year and we hope we can score a lot of goals this year,” he said. “It's kind of how we're built right now. We're just going to go full speed ahead and see what happens. It's going to be a very tough league again this year. We're expecting everybody else is going to improve just like they do every other year and we're expecting a battle again this year from one through to eight.”
The Coalers start the campaign with an opening night tilt against the Midale Mustangs before welcoming the newly formed Yellow Grass Wheat Kings to town on Nov. 8. The Wheat Kings enter the season sporting a contingent of eight or nine former Arcola/Kisbey Combines, which has filed a leave-of-absence with the league.
Ray Erickson, manager of the Wheat Kings, said the team will attempt to fill out their roster with a bevy of local players. He said the community is totally behind the team and everybody is very excited to have senior hockey back in town after an absence of approximately 15 years, so they are going to do everything they can to ice a strong team that represents the best of Yellow Grass hockey.
“We will have probably two lines of scorers and another two lines of quite defensive players and we should be pretty deep in the defence as well, so hopefully we'll be competitive,” said Erickson, noting the club is trying to organize an exhibition game in Yellow Grass against the Milestone Flyers during the final weekend of October as sort of a trial run. “That is our goal for this year. Ice a competitive team and have as much fun with the boys (as we can) and help the community keep their recreation facility up to date and strong there in Yellow Grass.”
Joel Moriarty, coach of the Bienfait Coalers, said their defence and goaltending will be solid and their forward corps can score with the best of them, so they should have a good shot at returning to championship status at the end of the campaign. He said their mix of veteran experience and youthful talent are all competitive players who are looking forward to showing Wawota which community boasts the best hockey team.
“When we do match up against Wawota in the regular season (Dec. 23 in Wawota and Jan. 13 at Bienfait), everybody will probably be excited,” said Moriarty. “It would definitely be nice to get a win and get rid of that taste of losing.”
