It’s always important to start with a bang, and the Cochrane Generals did exactly that to kick off 2016.
Gens travelled to High River Flyers on Jan. 3, looking to maintain the momentum that propelled them to top spot in the Heritage Junior Hockey League’s Southern Division during the first half of the season.
Flyers opened the scoring early in the first period through Josh Younker (assists from Luka Sokol and Damon Turner) before Gens replied through forward Connor Rendell (assisted by Noah Bigland and Slater Ransom).
The Cochrane side kicked into high gear in the second period as they took a convincing lead through a short-handed goal from Joey Stensland (unassisted). Captain Craig Packard (Ransom and Austin Keller with helpers) banged in another one on the power-play as the floodgates opened up.
From there it was all Gens as they added a fourth, through Rendell (his thirteenth goal of the season) on the power-play (Ransom picking up his third assist of the night).
Corey Goeson (Talus Hume and Patrick Dove with the setup) added another to round out the 5-1 victory.
The win now means that Gens maintain a slight two-point lead in their division after 26 games played over Okotoks Bisons, (Gens are on 40, Bisons have 38), who have a game in hand going into their upcoming clash.
“It was exactly what we were looking for,” said Gens head coach Evan McFeeters.
“With the first game back, you always try to shake off the rust. We put together a good 60 minutes.”
Flyers are a team that Gens haven’t had a lot of trouble with this season (2-1) going into this encounter. Does McFeeters think that it was a godsend that his side didn’t have to start the New Year with a game against top teams like Coaldale or Mountainview?
“It definitely helps not having to come back and go straight into a team like Okotoks, Airdrie, or Coaldale,” he said.
“Knowing we’ve had success against High River in the past gave our team some confidence, but we knew it was still going to be a battle since they’re one of the most physical teams in the league.”
Gens will now face one of the toughest tests of their season as they travel to Okotoks Bisons (second place in the Southern Division) on Jan. 8, and then host Mountainview Colts (first place in the Northern Division) on Jan. 9.
“We’re treating this weekend as the biggest one of our season so far,” McFeeters said.
“Okotoks in our mind are going to be battling with us until the end of the season for top spot in our division, so it’s a must-win game.
“Then, Mountainview the next night, will be another tough battle. If we can pick up four points from the weekend, we’re going to be fitting pretty well going into the playoffs.”
After having only one practice over the holiday break, McFeeters feels that his team is going to need some high-intensity practices to prepare themselves for two games in two days that could make or break their season.
“We only practiced once in eight days during the break, since a lot of our players were all over the place,” he said.
“Now, we need to have two solid practices this week. We have all of our players back, so it should be a full line up come Friday night.”
A lot of teams that were as dominant as Gens have been in a first half of a season tend to let their foot off the pedal in a season’s second half.
What is McFeeters doing to combat complacency and who does he expect to step up in 2016?
“We just keep continuing to focus on our process for 60 minutes,” he said.
“We set up game plans and we usually get off to a quick start, but there are certain parts of games where our team might get a little bit off focus after a goal which is something we’re still working on.
“As for who can step up, we’re going to look on relying on guys like Dustin Boone, Brett Berndt, and Dustin Ponath to find that veteran leadership in our lineup.
“They’ve been around for a long time, and have played a lot of games at this level.
“They’re not the guys we rely on to score the goals, but the ones we rely on to play some big minutes against other teams’ top lines and contribute that way.
“We’re going to be leaning on them heavily for the last half of the year.”
