The defending League and Coy Cup champion Quesnel Kangaroos will play their first game of a new Central Interior Hockey League season this weekend.
The Roos will host the Williams Lake Stampeders tomorrow (Saturday) night at 7-30 at the West Fraser Centre.
New coach and now part-time player Jordan Draper says they expect to have a target on their back this year.
“Ya. I think Williams Lake, obviously they had a good year last year and I think that they’re just going to continue to get stronger and stronger the next couple of years. The core of their team is pretty young so they’re going to get more comfortable every year in the league and I think they’re going to be very good so we’re going to have our work cut out playing against them and being in the same division as them. Rupert and Terrace are always good. Terrace, their top players are all young, mid 20’s so they’re going to be very strong again. So our work is going to be cut out for us this year and everybody is going to be gunning for us, so we need to make sure we’re bringing our ‘A’ game very game.”
Draper says they won’t have a lot change over this year.
“I would say the majority of our team is coming back. We’ll have a couple of new faces and there are a few guys that have played in years past that are coming back. So I think you’ll see a lot of familiar faces.”
The new coach says he also won’t change much from behind the bench.
“I don’t really want to change too much from what Harley did. He did a great job and obviously we won the Championship so there’s not a lot to change. I think just a different perspective and a different voice. I’ve been around so many a few different drills in practice, but for the most part things will probably be pretty much the same.”
Despite winning last year, Draper feels there is still room for improvement.
” I think that last year we won and everything was great, but I don’t think we played our best hockey, so I think that there is still a lot of growth and room for improvement., I think if we put some pieces and some things together we can play even better than we did last year.”
In terms of motivation and expectations after such a successful year, Draper says they always have those expectations on themselves.
While this is Quesnel’s first game, Williams Lake is coming off a 10-2 win over Nechako last weekend.
