He's only been on the job since May but already Stampede Head Coach and General Manager Cary Eades is implementing his own style of play.
"You know we want to play hard, we want to play in your face hockey and hopefully representative of the community. Something they can be real proud of," Eades said.
The Herd was at the bottom of the USHL last season in goal scoring and players hope to step it up this year by picking up the pace.
"[We are] constantly on the puck attacking and being really hard to play against and creating turnovers and odd-man rushes, which is a good style to play especially in this league. Every night's real tough. With that style of play, it will help create a lot of offense for us," Matt Van Voorhis said.
A lot of focus was put on that offense in the off-season. The Stampede drafted the top two under-18 goal scorers in Tony Calderone and Sioux Falls-native Zeb Knutson. They also traded for forwards Thomas Forgione and Dennis Kravchenko.
"We can tell in practice that there's a lot more scoring, even on good goalies. Chuck Lindgren, he's a great goalie, so is Jan [Obernesser.] They're both really good goalies. We have a lot of good forwards who know how to shoot the puck. We'll definitely put the puck in the net a lot," Kravchenko said.
"They're finding ways to score on me this year in practice. I think it's good. In a way I don't like when they score on me. I don't want to say it's kind of nice, but it's kind of nice. We'll score some goals this year for sure," Lindgren said.
For the second straight season the Stampede get things started on the road in Lincoln. The Puck drops this Friday at 7:05 p.m. The herd's home opener is October 5.
Comments