Q and A With The Coach - Building For Next Season
April 27, 2010
The Neepawa Natives head into the 2010-2011 season with much optimism, as the club returns a solid core of forwards and an exceptional group of veteran defencemen. Add to the mix a young goaltending tandem that combined for 34 wins and finished 13 games above .500 last season, and there is much reason for optimism.
Coach Bryant Perrier believes his club is headed in a very positive direction. Adding to his excitement has been a very strong recruiting season, in which the club has managed to add several key pieces to the club's roster for next season.
Please enjoy this edition of Q & A With The Coach - Building For Next Season. In it, Coach Perrier discusses the way the club has been handling its off season.
Q - How has the off season been to date?
BP - "I would say productive. We are recruiting players, we have had a spring camp and now it is off to some other venues and camps where we will see some other players. It has been a great off season to date."
Q - Do you stay in contact with the players?
BP - "Yes. Our players and prospects are on a strength and conditioning program right now and that has us in constant contact with them. As well, most of them have been back to Neepawa at least once already. A majority of them made it back for spring camp and they participated in the camp."
Q - How was the spring camp?
BP - "It was great. There were a lot of great young guys, and we also got another chance to see a few of our recruits who will be joining our team next season. They were all great on the ice and are from good families. It was a great experience to have everyone together."
Q - How were the veterans?
BP - "Most of the guys were in really good shape for this time of year. Our leadership was exactly what it should have been at the camp. A guy like Eddie Friesen (team captain) is a dynamic personality and really adds a lot in a situation like that. On the whole, our vets were great."
Q - And the rookies?
BP - "Outstanding. We obviously don't want to tip our hand too much here. But, we look at losing Frasz, Suderman, Pawluk as elite players from last spring, and we feel as though we have recruited guys who can step into all three roles. Spencer Hoehn was an elite skater who brought a true speed component to the team and we know we have found that type of speed. Laner's (Jordan Lane's) leadership and big brother mentality was important. But, we feel we will have a great team concept in that area of toughness and keeping things honest."
Q - Any developments to announce?
BP - "We made a big trade with OCN. We traded our number one and two picks in the draft this year for the rights to Curtis Oliver from Elkorn, MB. As well, we acquired OCN's third and sixth rounders.
Q - What was the reasoning behind that?
BP - "Oliver is an outstanding sixteen year old player who can play now, so just on that note, we love that we were able to acquire a very good local player. The way the draft works, the first five rounds are geared for taking local players and the last five are for taking players out of your local area. We will be taking more than one Neepawa player in the first five rounds, and that means that the importance for the rest our draft is rounds six through ten. We have accumulated three sixth round draft picks. This trade with OCN got us another sixth pick."
Q - How can a sixth round pick be better than a first?
BP - "In essence, it is like two drafts. The first five rounds are geared for taking players from your local community. The sixth round and on is when you can take players from all of the other areas. A sixth round pick is like a first rounder in many ways because it is the first round that we can go into Winnipeg. The sixth round picks are like gold in the draft. We have three of them now. We may pick all three picks before the draft, we may trade any number of them for roster personnel. We will see where we are at. The Neepawa players we are taking cannot be taken because of them being protected by our league rules, so we had the luxury of moving the first two picks for Oliver, and we still get our Neepawa players and we deepened our sixth round with three major assets in those picks .It works out great."
Q - Do you know who you will pick?
BP - "We are certain who a few of our picks will be. The talent pool is quite high. We have our rankings in place and we will pick accordingly. Right now, we are just continuing to do our research on our draft list. We want to make sure we have a good profile on the players we are looking at."
Q - What are your thoughts on The Anavet Cup (Dauphin beat La Ronge four games to one in the right to represent the Man -Sask region at the nationals)?
BP - "We are thrilled for Dauphin. Over the last six years, the SJHL and MJHL have gone three series wins each, with last season going to game seven overtime. Our league is among the top leagues in Canada and is just getting better and better every year."
Q - Does your team have any specific goals for next season?
BP - "Obviously, we want to be the best we possibly can be. We feel that our team and organization made a huge step forward last season, and we want an even bigger one this year. We are getting into territory right now where we can start to gain prominence with that next step. I guess our goals right now are to make sure we get guys back in great shape and that we as an organization help each player on our team to be the best they can be. If that happens, we will be in a position to become a very prominent organization."
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