It’s the opening of what the Soo Greyhounds hope will be a rebound season.
Tonight, the local Ontario Hockey League club kicks off regular season play with a divisional matchup against the Flint Firebirds at the GFL Memorial Gardens.
After four exhibition games, all minus a handful of players away at National Hockey League training camps, the Greyhounds are looking forward to the added meaning of regular season games.
“We’re excited to finally play some games that have some meaning,” Greyhounds coach John Dean said. “At the same time, we’re not putting pressure on the guys. There’s a certain expectation and standard that needs to be upheld everyday, exhibition or regular season, it shouldn’t matter.”
“We have this really nice combination of relaxed, loose, but intense, so we’re trying to keep it that way,” Dean added.
For the young players entering their first experiences of OHL life, Dean said the exhibition season showed them that “things you can get away with in minor hockey that you can’t get away with in the Ontario Hockey League.”
“Clock management was a big one. Style of play over the course of 60 minutes is a big one,” Dean added. “How quickly you have to move pucks, shift length. There’s so many little things inside the game that we’d rather learn during the exhibition season than the regular season.”
Dean said the final few days leading into Friday’s opener saw the team focus on some things that saw less work during training camp and the exhibition season.
“We’ve been really focusing on play away from the puck, so play with the puck has been an emphasis this week,” Dean said. “More than anything, try to review as much as we can, get our competitive level up early in the week and our touches and our feel for the puck a little bit later in the week.”
Dean confirmed that forwards Jordan D’Intino and Alex Kostov will be available for the weekend and have avoided any further supplemental discipline from the league.
The pair were given second fight, same stoppage misconducts during the Greyhounds exhibition win in Sudbury last week. Both players saw action during the Greyhounds home-and-home sweep of Saginaw over the weekend.
Dean also said that defenceman Arttu Karki remained the lone player at NHL camp for the team and was listed as a “maybe” for the weekend.