At long last, the Canes are back
The puck is finally ready to drop for the Lethbridge Hurricanes. The key word here being “finally”. It’s been nearly a year since the Lethbridge Hurricanes set a blade on the ice. Specifically, March 7 in a 5-4 loss to the Kelowna Rockets in Kelowna.
After the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak iced their season mere days after that loss last March, the Canes finally kick off their 2021 Western Hockey League season tonight in Edmonton against the Oil Kings in a 24-game, Central Division-only regular season.
“I think the boys are pretty excited,” said Hurricanes veteran forward Justin Hall, whose season was delayed three times with attempted starts in October, December and January. “We haven’t been this exited in a long time. It’s been a year and we all just want to play hockey. I think we’re all ready to go.”
The weekend series — as all games will be this season — comes back to the Enmax Centre Saturday night at 6 p.m., minus the fans as per pandemic protocol.
For the history buffs, the Canes last home game was almost exactly one year ago, a 4-3 loss to the Brandon Wheat Kings Feb. 29.
Let the 24-game sprint begin. “I think the biggest thing is the urgency,” said Hurricanes head coach Brent Kisio. “There aren’t a lot of games compared to a usual season, so each game means that much more. It’s kind of exciting from that standpoint, every night is a big game for us. From a development standpoint, we just have to do things a bit quicker and we’ve been doing that. We’re trying to get better every day.”
It’s been an almost year-long layoff for third-year defenceman Alex Cotton, but that downtime has certainly been eventful.
After a breakout second season in Lethbridge in which he led WHL defenceman with 20 goals and 67 points, Cotton was snapped up by the Detroit Red Wings in the fifth round of the NHL draft in October after the draft was delayed by three months due to the pandemic.
“It’s crazy how you don’t play hockey for so long and then you’re playing (tonight). I’m just super-excited and I think everyone is. We’re obviously looking to win and nothing less than that,” said Cotton, who will look to impress the NHL team that picked him in the shortened 2021 season and hopefully build on his breakout numbers.
“I just have to top it, that’s my goal,” said Cotton. “I did have a pretty good year last year, but I think I can be better, for sure. I’m just going to go out there every game and try to top the season I had last year.”
The Canes head into the 2021 season with a young roster full of second-year players looking to build on their rookie campaigns.
They will soldier on without the likes of Dylan Cozens and Calen Addison, who have departed to start their NHL careers with the Buffalo Sabres and Minnesota Wild, respectively.
“You can’t fill a Dylan Cozens role,” said Kisio, whose team will also be without Euros Oliver Okuliar and Danila Palivko, who will remain overseas. “He’s a special player and a special kid and you’re lucky to have him. It’s the same with Addison as well. But we’re really happy with our depth.
We have a deep team and we need everybody to step up more, especially the older guys. It’s time for (Logan) Barlage and Dino Kambeitz. It’s their team now and it’s their time to come and shine and then the younger guys have to follow suit.”
Meanwhile, some of the Hurricanes youth movement has also impressed the Canes coach.
“We’ve been pretty excited about most our guys,” said Kisio. “A lot of our young guys have come in and look great, but we’ll see after this weekend. It’s a little different when you start playing other teams. (Chase) Pauls and Cole Miller has come in in the last little bit and he’s good as well. We have a group that looks really good. (Logan) McCutcheon and (Kayden) Sadhra-Kang look great. But we’ll see. We’ll see when we play for real and when we’re playing
Edmonton.”
Meanwhile, the familiar goaltending tandem of local product Carl Tetachuk and Bryan Thomson return with no clear number one starter.
“We’re trying to play it out and see where it’s at,” said
Kisio. “We’ll see how they do and kind of play it after that. We have two good goaltenders with Tetachuk and Thomson. It’s a bit harder with the goalies not playing as many games and splitting that, but we feel very confident in both.”
The first test starts tonight in Edmonton and wraps up here Saturday.
And if there’s any rust, now’s the time to kick it off.
“It could be a bit sloppy. It’s been a while since we played, but we’ll just play hard and it should be good,” said Hall. “They (Oil Kings) have a lot of talented players still there. So it should be a good battle with them. We have to shut those guys down because they have a lot of big name players over there. But it should be a good battle.”
“They have a couple of players who are going to do some damage,” added Cotton. “For us, we had success with our systems last year against them. So I think we’re going to go and try to do the same thing this year.”
On Saturday, the Hurricanes will return home, but will play for an arena full of empty seats.
“We’ll see,” said Kisio of the fan-less venue. “We’ve seen it enough times on TV where it’s happening. We’ll try to mimic noise as much as we can. It’s obviously not the same feel, but I think (it’s) the excitement of just playing a game again. With the fans, our building is so great and we’ll miss that atmosphere and hopefully it returns sooner than later. But once the puck drops and the game gets going, the competitiveness will pick up.”
Follow @DWoodardHerald on Twitter