Oh, what a difference a year makes.
This Friday marked the first practice of the 2020-2021 schedule for the local squad, as they took the ice this morning as a unit for the first time in almost a year -- only seven days after the Warriors would drop a 5-1 decision to the Ice at Mosaic Place on Mar. 6, 2020, sports throughout North America would grind to a halt as the COVID-19 pandemic officially began in earnest.
To say the return was a relief and happy time combined with a sense of urgency to get to work is a bit of an understatement.
“There was a lot of excitement, there wasn’t a whole lot us coaches had to do to get them fired up and ready to work today, I thought they did a great job,” said Warriors head coach Mark O’Leary. “A lot of the guys had new equipment on and everything, and they haven’t had new equipment on probably in a long time. So there was some rustiness for sure, but for the most part it was pure excitement and the guys were excited to get back at ‘er.”
Moose Jaw Minor Hockey product Nolan Jones was one of those taking the ice for the first practice. The 19-year-old defenceman echoed O’Leary’s sense of excitement.
“It felt great to be back on the ice and shake the rust off,” Jones said. “It’s been a while since we’ve been with a team and kind of being in a real team practice, so it was good to get out there and get moving around and get a feel for it while being around all the guys again.”
Jones admitted it took a bit to get going after so long off, but muscle memory being what it is, it was a matter of just getting back into the swing of things.
“To be honest, it felt a little heavy at the start, but once the practice went on the rust came off and it started to feel normal again,” Jones said. “You finally remember what it’s like after the first couple of minutes.”
The Warriors will have exactly seven days to get things in order from an on-ice perspective before their schedule opener on Friday, Mar. 12 against the Brandon Wheat Kings. That’s not to say they haven’t been plenty busy off-ice in the meantime, with the quarantine offering a chance for plenty of systems and video work over Zoom as well as mental preparation for the intense schedule ahead.
“We’ve had team work-outs in the morning, Brooke Koslofski would run those, then the coaching staff would have the afternoon with the players and we’d go over systems stuff, some standards and expectations when it comes to on-ice and off-ice,” O’Leary explained. “There was a little bit of video, a bit of drawing on the whiteboard and the guys were engaged and picking it up pretty quick. That will help when training camp is so short.”
The Warriors wasted little time getting things going from an intensity aspect. This is a team that wants to see wholesale improvement over their struggles from last season, when they finished with a 14-44-4-0 record, and the first practice made sure to hit on that point.
“We hit the ground running right from the get-go, it was all about the compete level in battles and in races,” O’Leary said. “We started the practice a three-on-three small area game and the last drill of the day was races, short sprints. So it was good, it was a work day, there was a lot of skating, there was a lot of competing, but it’s training camp. It’s March, but it’s still training camp and everything is going to come down to our work and our compete level, so the players did a great job.”
It certainly doesn’t hurt the focus level when you look at the test the Warriors are going to face right off the bat. The Wheat Kings were expected to be a division contender, and the Prince Albert Raiders -- their opponents in game two on Sunday night -- are still the defending WHL champions and feature a veteran line-up.
Moose Jaw Warriors head coach Mark O'Leary runs through a drill during the Warriors second practice on Saturday morning. | James Gallo“At the end of the day, there are going to be no easy games, that’s for sure,” O’Leary said. “When you look at the line-ups and rosters for all these teams, anybody can beat anybody on any given night, that’s good for all the players and good for the teams. If you’re going to play 24 games, they might well all be good ones and I think we’ll see that in the division.”
The schedule itself will see the Warriors play 10 games at 4 p.m. and 14 games at 8 p.m. While his personal preference is to hit the ice in the afternoon, any time for hockey is a good time in the pandemic era.
“I love afternoon games, myself, even as a player I loved playing in the afternoon and if they wanted to give us more of those it would have been good,” O’Leary said. “But I can’t complain one bit about our schedule, it comes as advertised, there’s a lot of games in a short amount of time, but the players are excited about it and the coaches see no problem at all. From a Moose Jaw perspective, it’s more than fair and we’re looking forward to it.”
The Warriors will now have six more days to get into the swing of things before the first game. O’Leary expects things to ramp up significantly in that short of time, with the goal of being as prepared as possible for the opener.
“They maybe weren’t as sharp as they will be in a week, especially with the ice the way it is with seven teams practicing on it, but the intent and the intensity is right where it needed to be,” he said. “If that sort of intensity is there next week, we’ll be happy with that and if we can put a bit of polish on it, that would be great.”
