It's been a long summer for the Prince George Spruce Kings, mostly due to the fact last season ended in February when they missed the playoffs.
Six months of inactivity on the ice without any meaningful games comes to an end tonight when the Spruce Kings open their 22nd B.C. Hockey League season against the Merritt Centennials (7 p.m.).
This year's version of the team will be vastly different than the one which finished second-last overall in the BCHL with just 14 wins in 58 games. The new-look Kings have speed to burn on the forward lines and a much-more mobile defence. While it remains to be seen how they compare with the rest of the teams in the six-team Mainland Division, at the very least they will be fun to watch in the intimate confines of Rolling Mix Concrete Arena, where spectators sit right on top of the action.
Brett Mennear, the 20-year-old centre the Kings acquired as the futures part of a January trade with West Kelowna will start the season on the top forward line with Braiden Epp and 19-year-old Jamie Huber, who lit up the Greater Ontario league last year with 33 goals and 80 points for the Listowel Cyclones.
Bound for college hockey next year at Bentley University, Mennear was named this week as the Spruce Kings' captain, having led the Warriors as an assistant captain. He brings a ton of playoff experience, having played more than 30 games in the postseason last season on the way to winning the RBC Cup national championship.
Epp, a 20-year-old right winger, is the only born-and-bred Prince George boy in the Kings' lineup and he's already showing every sign he's back on track after an injury-plagued season in which he scored just nine goals after finding the net 24 times in his sophomore season.
"It starts with speed and Braiden worked hard over the summer and came back in better shape and there's a deeper surrounding cast for him to play with," said head coach Chad van Diemen, back for his second season behind the Spruce Kings bench. "We really needed to address our footspeed up front in order to play as aggressive a game, as we want to frustrate opponents and take their time and space away."
Epp and Kyle Johnson, 18, a Yale recruit for 2018, will each serve as assistant captains. Johnson will centre a line with Tanner Campbell and RW Chong Lee, who is being groomed to play for South Korea in the 2018 Olympics. Parker Colley, Cavin Tilsley and Jarod Hovde showed some good chemistry playing together at the end of last season. The fourth line will have Florida-born Travis Schneider as the pivot with wingers Ben Poisson and Ethan de Jong, both products of the Burnaby Winter Club.
Adam Burnett and newcomer Connor Russell, an off-season acquisition from Cowichan Valley, are the senior members of the blueline brigade and will also be wearing 'A's on their jerseys. Russell started his BCHL career in Penticton and played in the playoffs for Cowichan. Aside from Burnett, Cooper Prechel and rookie Liam Watson-Brawn are the only returning d-men, but Sam De Melo is familiar with the league, having played last year for Salmon Arm. Americans Mike Winn, 20, and Drew Lennon, 18, are in their first BCHL seasons. None of the starting six on D are explosive offensive types, but they all skate well enough to keep up with their opponents in what is arguably the top junior A hockey league in Canada. Collectively, they should be a significant improvement over what the Kings had to work with on the back end last season.
"Our overall team speed has improved significantly at every position," said van Diemen. "So far we've been very happy with the guys. They came back in great shape and paid attention to detail throughout camp and have really bonded as a group and it's been a fun group to work with so far.
"It's a very hardworking group and when you've got that, it's a very good base to start with, and we'll fill some holes and teach along the way and make some adjustments. The biggest challenge is there are a lot of good teams in our league and you don't have any easy games, every team has good players."
Seventeen-year-old goalie Liam McCloskey was shell-shocked his first junior season trying to shore up the league's third-most porous defence and he will show the benefits of having faced all those shots this time around. Nineteen-year-old Stefan Wornig, at six-foot-six, 220 pounds, is probably the biggest goalie in Spruce Kings' history and he looked sharp in the preseason in their three wins over Grande Prairie, giving the Kings the makings of a solid 'tender tandem.
"Liam probably got a lot more minutes last year than what was planned and hopefully he grows from that and takes as much positive from that as he can..." said van Diemen. "Stefan has been in the league for two years and has played behind two very good 20-year-old starters in our league and hopefully he's ready to prove he's an elite goaltender in our league."
The Spruce Kings had great difficulty taking points away from teams in their own division and did not gain as much as a single point from Chilliwack and Langley. They won just nine of 29 games at home. The goal this year is to make Rolling Mix Concrete Arena a house of pain for visiting teams.
"We'll have a good balanced attack right from the start and that's the most exciting thing about our offence," said Johnson. "We're feeling optimistic and confident about our group and we'd like to get in the top-two so we have home ice as much as we can in the playoffs.
"The biggest difference from last year is our team is resilient. We folded last year under any adversity but now we're a very level-headed group and we're realistic that if we put 40 or 50 pucks on net, five of them are going to go in, and you'll win a lot of hockey games if five go in."
The Kings' schedule is top-loaded with home games the first two months with 14 of their first 18 games at home. The price for that comes in January and February when they play 18 of their last 22 on the road. That puts even more pressure on the team to rack up wins early.
"It's hard to play catchup in games and in the standings as well, if you put yourself in a hole early, and starts are huge,"said van Diemen. "Our staff has worked hard to prepare the guys for the start and we feel we do have a group that is capable of getting off to a good start. We do have a tough division and we have a lot of work to do.
"This team has the ability to make this a very difficult building to play in by frustrating opponents and attacking them with speed for 60 minutes. To get off to a good start at home would be huge."
On Saturday, the Kings host the Penticton Vees in their only regular season visit to Prince George.
