IceDogs have a bigger bite
Arthur Kaliyev couldn’t wait for Saturday’s game — his first in the Ontario Hockey League.
Then, he couldn’t wait to put it behind him.
“I think it was just a bad first game, and I would say I’ll just try to bounce back,” said the Hamilton Bulldogs rookie.
Kaliyev, a 16-year-old forward, wasn’t the only one disappointed by the outcome of the season opener — a slightly sloppy 4-1 loss to the visiting Niagara IceDogs.
The feeling swept through the stands, behind the bench and into the dressing room. It impressed itself on the faces of the players.
“In the end, you want to win all the time,” said Isaac Nurse, the lone Bulldogs scorer.
His short-handed goal late in the second put the team in a position to tie it up before Niagara squashed any chance of a Hamilton comeback with a pair of markers in the third period.
“You don’t want to lose at the start of the season and then win. You just want to win from the get go,” he added.
More than anyone, though, the result seemed to disappoint the rookies — players like Kaliyev, who have spent months, maybe years, anticipating their OHL debuts. And it’s not because the loss was particularly significant — it wasn’t.
As head coach John Gruden said in the aftermath, “it’s one game.”
It’s because it just wasn’t how they imagined it turning out.
Take Jake Murray, who circled Saturday’s game on his calendar when he signed with the Bulldogs back in March.
He’s been dreaming about it ever since, “so for it be here was fun,” the 17-year-old forward said. “I just wish things had gone a little differently.” Connor McMichael agreed. “It’s obviously not the outcome we wanted,” said the forward, 16. “Hopefully, next weekend, we can bounce back.”
After the game, Kaliyev, Murray and McMichael all acknowledged the huge jump between minor hockey (or Jr. B, in Murray’s case) and the OHL. The players are older, faster, bigger and more physical, they said, and you have far less time and space with the puck.
Yet none of them looked out of place against the IceDogs. Gruden seemed happy with how they performed, while Nurse said they “held their own.”
In particular, Kaliyev and McMichael were on the ice a lot, including on the power play. Gruden said they weren’t given minutes arbitrarily — he feels they’re ready and thinks they’re good enough to be out there. For the team as a whole, though, there’s still work to be done.
“We’ve got to simplify certain things to make it easier for these young guys to feel more comfortable, and that’s just normal,” he said. “The other thing is our older guys have got to make it easier for them and do things right a little bit more … it takes the pressure off them.”
That includes putting the puck into the net, which they managed just once despite firing 40 shots at IceDogs goaltender Stephen Dhillon. Kaden Fulcher, meanwhile, had 33 saves at the opposite end. “We want to play to a standard,” said Gruden. “It wasn’t good enough tonight, but we’re not going to sit and hit the panic button. We’ve got work and that’s the fun part of what we do.” NOTES: Ben Jones led the way for Niagara with a goal and two assists, while Oliver Castleman, Johnny Corneil and Kirill Maksimov registered single markers. … Connor Walters and Navrin Mutter were scratched Saturday, while Mackenzie Entwistle (ribs) and Ben Gleason (wrist) were out with injuries. They expect to return to the lineup in midOctober.