The regular season begins tonight for the Drumheller Dragons and all the signs are pointing to a strong year for the club.
The Dragons are 4-1 coming out of the preseason. Most recent on Wednesday night the Dragons took it to the Kindersley Klippers in front of a home town audience, and left with a 5-2 win.
“It is an improvement over last year, so we like that,” said assistant coach Kurt Walsten. “Going into the exhibition series, if you said we would be 4-1 right now… we are happy with that.”
The teams were tied after one, but in the second period the Dragons took a 3-2 lead. The Dragons put it out of reach with an early goal in the third, and then an empty netter. They outshot the Clippers 41-27.
While on paper this win looks impressive, Coach Walsten said they were out of sync a little bit and it wasn’t the team’s best performance.
“The flow just wasn’t there tonight,” said Walsten, “but we’ll take the win.”
He said the team’s best game so far was versus the Grizzlys last Monday night where they won 4-1. So far scoring doesn’t seem to be a problem as they lead their competition in goals 27-18. Their only lost was an 8-7 defeat on August 29 to the Calgary Canucks.
“We scored a lot of goals in exhibition and that is all really positive,” he said.
You can’t always count on preseason to be an accurate precursor of things to come for the season. Walsten explains they invited 90 players to camp and have taken a good look at them in the exhibition season. A number of their seasoned veterans were not in the line-up on Wednesday night’s game in order to be healthy for the season opener. The team hopes to have its roster down to about 25 by then.
The Dragons open the regular season tonight versus the Calgary Canucks at home. Be sure to make it to the Tailgate Party before the game. They return the favour on Saturday playing the Canucks in Calgary.
The Dragons rolled over the Kindersley Klippers of the SJHL on Wednesday night to close the exhibition season with a 4-1 record. The regular season starts tonight as Drumheller hosts the Calgary Canucks.
