Yellowhead Chiefs hard at work in advance of season opener
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- Published on Wednesday, October 1, 2014
By Eoin Devereux
The Neepawa Banner
The Yellowhead Chiefs are counting down the days until the start of the 2014/15 Manitoba AAA Midget Hockey League season.
The team has been very busy over the past few weeks preparing for their home opener, which is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 4 in Shoal Lake against the Norman Northstars.
Head Coach Chad Facey said the roster has been finalized and it’s now just a case of getting down to work with the players that they have and honing their abilities.
“The coaching staff has spent the past week practicing with them,” said Facey. “We are working on a lot of skill development. I think that some teams forget about the importance of that type of work. They get too focused on running a system. We will be working on some systems as well but it’s important to enhance and then fine tune some skills these players have.”
Facey noted that the Chief’s participation in the Southwest Cougar Fall Tournament was the coaches first opportunity to see what some of the younger players at training camp were able to do during real in-game situations.
“For the Southwest [Tournament], we were still in the process of evaluating what we had. We brought a few extra players with us and we were looking to see what kind of chemistry we could get on some of the line pairing. See which players worked best with one another,” said Facey “It also allowed us an opportunity to look at the younger players. Put them in a lot of in-game situations and see exactly how they responded.”
While the Yellowhead Chiefs ended the weekend with a 0-3 record, Facey stressed that the notches in the win and loss column were not important just yet. What he focused on was the how the players worked together and how quickly they were able to adapt to their opponents.
“We played three games at the Southwest tournament. We lost the first game to Southwest 7-3 and then lost two one-goal games to Central Plains and Interlake. It wasn’t the results we wanted but at the same time this was more about seeing what level of skill we have. I saw our team play very good defensive hockey, which for this early in the year is a very big positive. The last two games of the tournament we played very solid defensively and battled hard.” said Facey.
