The Grande Prairie Storm will be kicking off their season Friday night against the Bonnyville Pontiacs.
Chris Schmidt will be entering the season as the Storm’s head coach for the third year. He says through the first few weeks of training camp and pre-season games he has been trying to feel the team out.
“Figuring out who everybody is, and what their capable of. Every year there is so many new faces.”
Despite the plenty of new faces, the team is roughly the same age they have been previous seasons.
Just two seasons ago, the Storm reached the Centennial Cup, Schmidt added that not a single player from that team is on the roster today.
Schmidt believes that regardless of not having any of those players from just two seasons ago, this team can still compete.
“I think we’re in a spot to compete for sure.”
“Highly motivated, good kids, they want to do well, they want to get better, they want to move on from here to go play at a higher level of hockey.”
Last season, the Storm had the highest average home attendance in the AJHL, with an average attendance of 1433 per regular season game.
Schmidt brought up about how cool it was for his players last season to play in front of a sold-out crowd in Grande Prairie against Whitecourt in the playoffs last year.
Schmidt added that he hopes to see the community out on Friday night to kick off the season.
“We would love to see everybody out, hopefully get the season started off good.”
Puck-drop is scheduled for 7:00 p.m., at the Bonnets Energy Centre against the Bonnyville Pontiacs.
