Prince George Cougars head coach Richard Matvichuk isn't making any promises the veteran-stacked team he has inherited will be carrying around any championship cups next spring.
But he is willing to guarantee his troops will be a much more disciplined crew on the ice this Western Hockey League season, and that just might be enough to push the Cougars over the top.
The Cats had the dubious honour of leading the league in penalty minutes the past two seasons and Matvichuk is certain there will be no sinbin threepeat.
"Discipline is huge, we're not going to be that team this year, I can promise you that," said Matvichuk, who joined the Cougars in June after leading the Missouri Mavericks to the regular season title as coach of the year in the ECHL last season.
"We're going to play hard and if it includes fighting that's what we're going to do. What we are going to eliminate is the stick penalties the dumb penalties that are 200 feet away from our net."
Collectively, the Cougars are older, stronger, faster and better able to stand up to the punishment of a 72-game schedule without having to resort to using their sticks, arms and elbows to illegally slow their opponents, Considering they averaged 17.9 penalty minutes a game, including a league-high 26 bench minors, it shouldn't be difficult for their penalty totals from last seson to tumble.
The Cougars begin their pre-season this weekend in Red Deer with games Friday afternoon (1 p.m. PT) against the Edmonton Oil Kings and Saturday (1 p.m. PT) against the Calgary Hitmen.
Heading into their 23rd season in Prince George, coming off another first-round playoff exit, the Cougars have cause for optimism this might be the season they will finally get to hang their first banner at CN Centre. (Yeah really, long-suffering Cougars fans, it could happen.)
The Cats have eight players who have been invited to NHL rookie camps, including forwards Jesse Gabrielle (Boston), Jansen Harkins (Winnipeg), Brad Morrison (New York Rangers), Kody McDonald (New York Islanders) and Brogan O'Brien (Colorado); and defencemen Sam Ruopp (Columbus) and Josh Anderson (Colorado).
With NHL camps starting two weeks later than normal due to the World Cup of Hockey, the Cougars will be without their best players for at least the first two weeks of the season. Ruopp, the Cougars' 20-year-old captain, is already in Columbus with the Blue Jackets and there's a real possibility he might not be back for his final season of junior eligibility.
The Cougars are loaded with 19-year-olds. Gabrielle, Harkins, Morrison, O'Brien, forwards Aaron Boyd and Jared Bethune, defenceman Shane Collins and goalie Nick McBride were all born in 1997. How they perform will largely determine the team's fortunes this season.
"The old ice age group drafted well with that '97 group and we put a lot of time into those kids and developing them," said Todd Harkins, now entering his third season as the Cougars' general manager. "The league doesn't just develop the players, you have to develop them in many ways off and on the ice in their skating and skill sets and you'll see it on the ice.
"I definitely know that two years when our '97s were very young, they were too small and not as strong physically. We turned the puck over a lot, and that's a very tiring situation to be in when you're trying to defend all the time. You could see that in some of the penalties two years ago and even last year, it was because we weren't strong enough.
"Now they're 19, the old guys in the league, they're the cream of the crop and they're having fun because they're strong enough to handle themselves and fight through checks."
The Cougars will demand accountability from the forwards, who are under orders to help out the defence, using their speed to create turnovers. On special teams, Matvichuk says his team wants to meet or exceed a magic number of 105 - the sum total of their their success rate scoring on the power play added to the rate the Cougars successfully kill off penalties.
"If you can get above that 105 total, you'll be set," said Matvichuk. "Our goal is to be top of the league in penalty killing and power play and we feel with the depth in our defence and the guys we have up front with Gabrielle, Harkins and Morrison, our power play should be good.
"Defence wins championships so we're going to play a style that is if we don't have (the puck) we're going to get it, but when we have it we're going to hold on to it. We'll be very aggressive and we want to score goals."
The other returning forwards still with the team are 20-year-olds Colby McAuley and Jordan Ross, 18-year-olds Kolby Johnson and Josh Curtis, and 17-year-old Justin Almeida.
The Cats will start the pre-season without their top pick in the import draft, 18-year-old Washington Capitals draft pick Axel Jonnson-Fjallby, who has decided to stay in the Swedish under-20 league.
"When I approached the draft I didn't want to go for a '97 because we had a lot of them and I didn't want a '99 because with the depth we have he might not get to play," said Harkins.
"I wanted to get a high-end '98 and roll the dice and see if we can get him and we don't have him yet but I'll keep working on it."
Assuming Ruopp doesn't come back, the blueline returnees are Olson, Anderson, Collins, Joel Lakusta, Max Martin and 20-year-old Shaun Dosanjh. Anderson missed 28 games with a broken back but is back to his snarly self again and the smooth-skating, offensive-minded Martin is also on the comeback trail, having missed all but 10 games due to a shoulder injury. Peter Kope, 17, has had a stellar camp and is the most likely rookie d-man to crack the roster this season.
In goal, Ty Edmonds, 20, and McBride appear to have a lock on the job. Edmonds had an NHL tryout with San Jose and is coming off his best WHL season after posting a 2.75 GAA and .913 save percentage in 45 games. McBride has a leg injury that limited him to 28 games and he will push the incumbent Edmonds for playing time. Taylor Gauthier, 15, has looked worthy of his status as the Cougars' first-round bantam pick in 2016 and he'll get some playing time in the pre-season before he gets sent back to his midget team in Calgary.
Matvichuk, the replacement for Mark Holick, who served 3 1/2 seasons with the Cougars, is new to the junior ranks as a coach and plans to lean on assistant coach Steve O'Rourke for his knowledge of the players and the other teams in the league. O'Rourke joined the Cougars in the off-season after three seasons with Red Deer Rebels, following a two-year stunt as an assistant with the AHL Abbotsford Heat.
Having coached adult pros the past four seasons, following a 13-year career as an NHL defenceman in Minnesota, Dallas and New Jersey, the 43-year-old Matvichuk is now dealing with teenagers and he's making every effort to connect with them.
"You've got to get involved with the kids more and you've got to spend more time with them to know what it's going to take to get them going." he said.
"We have a policy now and the guys can walk into my office anytime and they haven't been used to that. Taking to guys on the ice and in the dressing room, everybody's got a big smile on their face. We're going to keep everybody positive and we're going to have some fun and that usually leads to wins."
Veteran winger McAuley says the most striking difference in this year's team over last year is the maturity of the players, with everybody pulling in the same direction. He admits there was dissension in the ranks which became more apparent when the team was slumping in the second half of last season and that took some of the fun out of the game for the Cougars. All those negative signs are now gone.
"We have new staff, we have new intentions in this room now, and guys who have grown up," said McAuley. "It's obviously a big step from last year when there was cliques, there wasn't team guys. This year is going to be a good year."
The Cougars open the regular season in Victoria with a two-game-set against the Royals, Sept. 23-24. The Cats will then play Sept. 27 in Vancouver and Sept. 28 in Kelowna before their home-opening weekend at CN Centre, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, against the Kelowna Rockets.
The Cougars took steps last season to address their brutal travel schedule by leaving for road games a few days earlier than in past seasons. That, and the work of full-time trainer Craig Hyslop, might have had something to do with the team's drastic reduction in the number of man-games lost to injuries in 2015-16.
"We're going to manage it better, we're going to go into places two days early instead of just traveling all day on the bus and playing a game the next day," said Matvichuk. "We have 34 games that are back-to-backs throughout the season and we'll go in a couple days early to make sure we get our rest."
Prince George Cougars pre-season schedule
Friday, Sept. 2 (At Red Deer, Alta.)
Cougars vs. Edmonton Oil Kings (1 p.m. PT)
Saturday, Sept. 3 (at Red Deer)
Cougars vs. Calgary Hitmen (1 p.m. PT)
Wednesday, Sept. 7 (at Kennewick, Wash)
Cougars vs. Tri-City Americans (7:05 p.m. PT)
Thursday, Sept. 8 (at Kennewick)
Cougars vs. Portland Winterhawks (7:05 p.m. PT)
Friday, Sept. 9 (at Kennewick)
Cougars vs. Kootenay Ice (11 a.m. PDT)
Friday, Sept.16 (at CN Centre)
Cougars vs. Kamloops Blazers (7 p.m.)
Cougars 2016 pre-season roster
(year of birth in parenthesis)
Goalies (6) - Ty Edmonds (96); Nick McBride (97); Tavin Grant (98); Connor Dochuk (99); Zach Wickson (99); Taylor Gauthier (01).
Defencemen (13) - Sam Ruopp (96) *; Shaun Dosanjh (96); Tate Olson (97); Shane Collins (97); Josh Anderson (98); Joel Lakusta (98); Max Martin (99); Peter Kope (99); Ryan Schoettler (99); Jonas Harkins (00); Cole Moberg (00); Cole Beamin (01); Jack Michell (01)
Forwards (20) - Colby McAuley (96); Jordan Ross (96); Jansen Harkins (97); Brad Morrison (97); Jesse Gabrielle (97); Aaron Boyd (97); Jared Bethune (97); Brogan O'Brien (97); Kody McDonald (98); Bartek Bison (98); Kolby Johnson (98); Josh Curtis (98); Brendan Kochanski (98); Justin Almeida (99); Ethan O'Rourke (99); Adam Kadlec (99); Jackson Leppard (00); Tyler Ho (00); Reid Perepeluk (00); Keegan Craik (01).
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