Logan, rest of team healthy after long layoff
Spitfires prepare to change gears, but silver lining in lull in games is they’re all healthy
The Windsor Spitfires know there will be rust.
The club has not played a meaningful game in 44 days since being bounced from the Ontario Hockey League playoffs by the London Knights on April 4.
Now, the host team for the 99th MasterCard Memorial Cup has to quickly get up to game speed when the tournament opens Friday against the Saint John Sea Dogs, who won the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League title. Game time at the WFCU Centre is 7 p.m.
“Obviously, there’s going to be rust from not playing,” Spitfires defenceman Sean Day said. “For (the Sea Dogs) getting to go through playoffs, obviously it’ll be tough to jump right into the game plan.
“The first 10 minutes, you have to be focused. They’re in game shape and their mental state is game-situational where ours is practice-situational.”
Over more than six weeks of time off, the Spitfires have tried to practice at a high tempo to keep cardio up, but no workout can simulate game speed.
“When you play against your teammates, it’s a little bit different,” Spitfires defenceman Mikhail Sergachev said. “You go easy, you don’t go hard. That’s the rust.”
Saint John was the first of the three league champions to secure a spot at the tournament in Windsor and that actually allowed the Spitfires to get a jump on the scouting and planning.
“Right away, we got to see video right when they clinched,” Day said.
“It was an eye-opener. They
don’t play like any team in our league. They’re really fast.”
Off for more than a week, the Sea Dogs have also had some time to do a little scouting of the Spitfires.
“We took our time and focused on each and every team and especially on Windsor because it’s the first game,” Saint John defenceman Thomas Chabot said. “We’re still ready and hungry and these guys haven’t played in a while. We’re going to try and come out hard.”
Along with some extra scouting time, the Spitfires will try to take advantage of a healthy lineup.
“There are some advantages of sitting six weeks,” Saint John head coach Danny Flynn said. “You get to get healthy.”
Logan Stanley, who had knee surgery, returns to the lineup and will play his first game since Jan. 17. Thompson also said players like Logan Brown (groin) and Jalen Chatfield (eye), who were injured near the end of the regular season, are now 100 per cent where they might not have been in the playoffs.
“Our team is automatically better in that respect,” Spitfires head coach Rocky Thompson said. “Our team is in a better place now than they were at the end of the season.”
If his teammates are rusty from time off, Stanley knows he’ll be rusty from months off, but said the biggest thing for himself and the Spitfires is to keep things simple and build.
“Play simple and let your skill take over as the game wears on,” Stanley said. “Get pucks in, get pucks out. Don’t be too fancy and, as the game goes on, go with the flow and keep progressing.”
The Spitfires can also take advantage of the game being televised nationally.
That means three commercial timeouts each period compared to just one for a game not shown by Sportsnet.
“It helps us,” Thompson said. “It’s helped us every game we’ve played. Being able to rest, we can overplay individuals as a result of it.”
No doubt, the Spitfires will get more comfortable as the tournament goes along and the key is to win at least one of its three round robin games. With that, the Spitfires will, at the very least, get a chance to play in Thursday’s
We got to see video right when they clinched. It was an eye-opener. They don’t play like any team in our league.
tiebreaker game.
“We’re focused on our team,” Stanley said. “We’re hungry to play games. We’re done with practising now.
“We’re ready for this tournament. We know we have a good team and we’re healthy now. Some might think we’re an underdog, but that’s all right. We know we’re a good team.”