Hitmen gel in mini training camp
Junior team has only two weeks to get ready for an abbreviated WHL schedule
It was quite the extended off-season.
Incredibly long, thanks to COVID restrictions that rocked the hockey world.
Now, the Calgary Hitmen are in the midst of a relatively teeny-tiny training camp.
Very short, to be sure.
So time has been — and still is — an opponent like none other facing them.
“Two weeks will feel like a lifetime to get ready after all this waiting (for a restart),” said Hitmen veteran Riley Stotts. “With these two weeks we'll have, we'll be in a good spot to play after camp.”
That's, of course, the hope.
But whether they'll be as polished as they'd like to be once camp wraps up next week and they slide into their first games of an abbreviated WHL schedule — 24 games beginning for the Hitmen next Friday night on home ice against the incoming Red Deer Rebels (7:30 p.m., watch. Chl.ca/sportsnet 960 The Fan) — remains to be seen.
The idea of early-season excellence certainly seems to be asking a lot of them with the team lead-up at their temporary home of Seven Chiefs Sportsplex, just half the length of what is the usual time allotted for a Hitmen pre-season.
“I've never had a two-week training camp in junior hockey where we haven't played exhibition games,” said Hitmen head coach Steve Hamilton. “It's going to be a unique in a sense that our first hockey game in the standings is going to be our first game as a team. But every team's going through that.
“I want us to be a solid work in progress where we feel good about how we start games and we're able to adapt. I think the evolution of the team is going to take shape in the next couple of weeks, where we really get a feel of where we are heading into that first game.”
Bottom line?
It's about progress and not perfection, even though there were still expectations put on the players during what became an overextended off-season.
After all, there was plenty of time for them to work on — if nothing else — their off-ice fitness.
“This was an unprecedented off-season for everybody,” Hamilton said. “The one thing we kept reiterating to them through our strength coach is that this was an opportunity to transform themselves. You're never going to get an 11-month off-season again, knock on wood. If we're going to have to deal with it just like everyone else. It should've been viewed as opportunity.”
Get in shape.
Get strong.
Get explosive.
“Those are the things that they could control,” Hamilton continued.
“And it was so nice to see guys come back in great shape. The one thing you could find a way to do is work out and make the most of your time. As a whole, it's two thumbs up to our group for what they did and were able to do in that off-season.”
Now comes finding chemistry and brotherhood in what is a unique blink-of-an-eye camp.
“It's about how you use the time,” said Hitmen veteran Josh Prokop. “I know, based on the players we have with our work ethic and our coaching staff, that we'll be working hard.”
That hard on-ice work began with the first moments of camp last Saturday — that after months of relative inaction and weeks of lead-up quarantine.
With just 22 players and no cuts expected among the 13 forwards, seven defencemen and two goaltenders, the Hitmen are training with what is essentially their roster to start the 2020-21 WHL campaign.
Again, that's strange since there can be as many as 80 hopefuls in camp in a NON-COVID year.
“Obviously it's a different situation — that's probably the best way to describe it,” said Hitmen veteran Riley Fiddler-schultz. “None of us are used to this. We're used to having about a month of training camp with pre-season games and everything. But everybody's in the same boat.
“We've just got to make sure we're making the most of our practice time and video sessions, so we're physically and mentally
ready for that first weekend of games.”
The upside of all the restrictions in the face of the pandemic, including the fact the Hitmen are isolated from the rest of Calgary altogether — but each to their own rooms — at Grey Eagle Resort, is the bonding that comes along with seeing each other nearly 24/7 and knowing they're already a set roster.
“It's especially good for young guys,” Fiddler-schultz said. “It takes a big weight off their shoulders. Like I know myself, when I was 16, I was nervous going into camp and everything. You don't really know what's going to happen, and you're just trying to work as hard as you can and focus on the hockey aspect of it. This allows the rookies to kind of have fun with the guys and loosen up a little bit and not be so tight and nervous.”
Added Stotts: “Every year we go in knowing we have a long way to go before the end of the season. This year, we're going to find some chemistry as quickly as possible with the team and grow some relationships. “Hopefully, we'll bond and be able to play sharp and it will turn out to be a good season.”
The one thing you could find a way to do is work out and make the most of your time.