After months of waiting, the Manitoba Junior Hockey League season has officially arrived. For the Dauphin Kings, they'll be looking to build off making the playoffs last year as the seventh seed.
Tonight, they get the chance to start off on the right foot as they make the short trip up north to challenge the Swan Valley Stampeders.
Tonight's meeting is the first of six meetings between the two clubs throughout the 60-game regular season.
"This is something we look forward to. We brought in some guys with speed, we have some size and weight," said Head Coach & General Manager Doug Hedley. "We have a lot of speed and we feel we have good depth in our forward group."
In the preseason, Dauphin went 4-2. Swan Valley went 5-1. With it only being day one, Dauphin is still holding more players than they will in a short time.
"There's going to be some tough decisions going forward, we still have too many guys in town," added Hedley. "Our first six-game segment is going to be a really good evaluation tool. We'll have some guys rotating in and they'll have their chances to make a difference."
Let's take a look at some of last year's key stats for both Dauphin and Swan Valley:
Record:
Dauphin went 29-25-3-3 while Swan Valley finished in second at 42-13-3-2.
Special Teams:
Swan Valley was 20.3% on the power play while Dauphin went 15.1%. On the penalty kill, Dauphin was 80.5% while Swan Valley killed off 81.4% of the penalties they took.
Key Returnees:
Dauphin - Cole DeKoninck, Grady Hobbs, Carter Sawchuk, Nakodan Greyeyes, Leeam Tivers, Avery Smith, Andrew Liwiski.
Swan Valley - Josh Maucieri, John Jebamani, Michael Davis.
Key Additions:
Dauphin - Baron Thompson, Matthias Smith, Zach Grouette, Hugo Laflamme, Shon Olivier-Roy, Austin Lamotte.
Swan Valley - Cameron McDonald, Josh Beauchemin, Frazer Dodd, Tommy Cardinal, Trevor Schroeder.
When it comes to tonight's game, Doug Hedley knows starting in Swan Valley is never easy.
"They have some good size and they have new guys as well," he added. "We want to compete hard and play with high energy. It's important that we play good off the puck. I'm looking forward to the challenge."
Listen Live:
You can hear tonight's game right here on 730CKDM. The Parkland Source for Sports pregame show with Darnell Duff begins at 7:00 p.m. Puck drop is set for 7:30.
