The preseason experimentation process is over.
Saturday night in Kamloops, the puck drops on the Prince George Cougars' 18th season in the Western Hockey League. If all goes according to plan, the Cougars will start serving notice they're no longer alley Cats digging for scraps, but a team ready to command a place on the throne.
That's a lofty ambition for the Cougars. The lean years of last-place finishes and early playoff exits have turned what used to be jam-packed rink into a near-empty cavern. Just like the Cougars did in the first half last season, this year's edition looks good enough to create waves atop the B.C. Division standings, enough of a ripple to replace those green seats with the sea of white noise that used to make the CN Centre crowd so imposing for visiting teams.
Forget about what happened the past few weeks as the Cougars stumbled to a 1-3-1-0 exhibition record, this team has all the makings of a winner, one capable of filling the empty bellies of a hockey town that's spent the better part of two decades starving for a championship.
"Based on the history and where we've come from and the people we have, the guys are feeling very excited about the season that's coming up," said Cougars head coach Dean Clark. "As an organization we've built towards this. We have a great crop of kids coming in and we feel we have a good core of veterans, so we're excited."
The 2011-12 Cougars are top-heavy in players with at least two years of WHL experience. When Clark signed a five-year term to join the Cougars in 2009, that was the beginning of a three-year project to assemble a winning team. Clark, whose Calgary Hitmen came within an overtime goal of winning the 1999 Memorial Cup, has had three summers with head scout Wade Klippenstein and general manager Dallas Thompson to build a winner.
"It's a more mature team, guys who have played a lot of games in the league, and we expect more from everybody, it's their time to shine," said Thompson. "We're very happy with our crop of [1995-born players], we've signed 10 of them and six of them are still in camp. They've all played well throughout the exhibition season and deserve to be here and they're pushing other guys for jobs."
The growing pains were agonizing to watch the first year, but the team showed progress last season, despite being swept in the first round of playoffs. Now with as many as 19 WHL veterans to choose from, expectations are running high this is a team that will go deep in the 2012 playoffs.
Forwards
Assuming Brett Connolly comes back from the Tampa Bay Lighting camp, the Cougars will have 12 returning forwards. Half of them, including Connolly, are 19-year-olds, a rare luxury in P.G. That group includes Charles Inglis (back the San Jose Sharks' camp), Greg Fraser, Nick Buonassisi, Brock Hirsche, and Taylor Makin. Spencer Asuchak is the lone 20-year-old up front, playing on line with Hirsche and Troy Bourke, one of the highest-scoring 16-year-old in the WHL last season. Wilson Dumais, John Odgers, Caleb Belter and Tayler Thompson, all 18, also know their way around the rink. Alex Forsberg, the first-overall WHL bantam pick in 2010, heads the rookie crop in his first full WHL season, and fellow 16-year-olds Jake Mykitiuk, Chase Witala, Jordan Tkatch and Jarrett Fontaine have made great first impressions.
Defence
With just two returning blueliners last year, the Cats took their lumps last year. They proved they could score (fourth-best in the Western Conference) but only one team in the West was worse defensively. Now they have as many as six D-men coming back. The biggest questions are whether the Edmonton Oilers will return 19-year-old Martin Marincin to Prince George, and how well Jesse Forsberg will recover from off-season shoulder surgery. Without those two, the blueline is team's most glaring weakness.
Towering homebrew Dan Gibb casts an even larger shadow and he and 20-year-old Cody Carlson love to play the physical game. Joshua Smith has the hardest shot on the team and he and Shane Pilling have a full season under their belts. Rookies Linden Springer and California-bred Michael Mylchreest should get their share of icetime.
Goalies
Quick to react, Drew "Owl" Owsley seems to have eyes in the back of his head and he will need to keep that head on a swivel to give the Cougars what they need to protect leads. Goaltending was the Achilles heel in Cougarville last year and when that started to crumble, team confidence followed suit, with predictable results. If the Cougars are indeed a success, Thompson's off-season move to acquire the three-year veteran from Tri-City will be looked upon as a landmark achievement. Devon Fordyce, the youngster-in-waiting, proved he's ready to step into a major junior backup role after a full season in the Alberta major midget league.
Season synopsis
Shawinigan, Que., is 3,569 highway kilometres away from Prince George. While it would be a stretch to think this Cougars team is capable of earning a trip to the site of the 2012 MasterCard Memorial Cup in May as WHL champions, this is their year to make that push. It's the final phase of a three-year project to win something monumental, an achievement no Prince George team has accomplished since the franchise moved up from Victoria in 1994.
The Cougars came close in 1997, 2000 and as recently as 2007, when they made it to the conference final. Cats fans have had to be patient waiting on a team that missed playoffs six out of 17 years, but expectations are high they will finally get to see a banner hung from the CN Centre rafters.
