The long-term plan for the Kelowna Rockets looks good. Jason Smith, however, is focused on tonight and tomorrow.
The WHL’s 2018-19 season starts this evening with eight games, including the Rockets visiting the Kamloops Blazers at 7 p.m. On Saturday, Kelowna will host Kamloops, 7:05 p.m. at Prospera Place.
Regardless of how Kelowna fares this weekend, this season will be one of change for the Rockets. No less than six important players are gone from the 2017-18 roster, a season which saw the Rockets finish first in B.C. Division standings with 43 wins and 93 points.
This season? It’s anyone’s guess as to how Kelowna will finish.
“It’s a year where it’s a big change-over in our players,” said Smith, Kelowna’s head coach. “It’s probably the most guys we’ve lost in a year since I’ve been here. But it’s a great opportunity for younger guys to step up and build and grow their games from last season.
“We have some guys who’ve had to be in (top-line) roles and had success. Now it’s going to be a little more pressure on them to provide leadership as well as quality play on the ice. I think they’re all excited about the challenge, and that’s all you can ask for.”
In junior hockey, the roster is a revolving door, with players arriving and leaving, sometimes at a rapid pace. In Kelowna’s case, the Rockets won’t have their top three scorers from last year, with Kole Lind (39 goals, 95 points) Dillon Dube (38 goals, 84 points) and Carsen Twarynski (45 goals, 72 points) having graduated from the junior ranks.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the Rockets also said goodbye to their top-three scoring defencemen in Cal Foote (4th in team scoring with 19 goals and 70 points), Gordie Ballhorn (6 goals, 42 points) and James Hilsendager (6 goals, 24 points).
That’s a whole lot of offence missing. Yet not all is lost for Rockets fans.
The team has plenty of good, young talent; good enough that Rockets management hopes it becomes a talking point when the decision to pick the 2020 Memorial Cup host is made.
Kamloops, Kelowna and Lethbridge are the three teams in the running. Generally, WHL governors make their selections on how much profit a bid can generate, with each WHL team taking a slice of that profit. The bigger the pie, the bigger the slice. But an underlying tone of late is how well the host team will fare. Though WHL owners and general managers don’t admit it, the last thing they want is for the league to be embarrassed by a poor host showing — thus the need for a strong roster.
With a roster filled with five 19-year-olds plus several good 17- and 18-year-olds, Kelowna’s long-term plan is to have a battle-tested group ready for when the 2020 Memorial Cup rolls around.
But “that’s in the future,” Smith said. “It’s a great opportunity if it all works out for the city of Kelowna to host the Memorial Cup, which is a great event. As coaches and players, we don’t have a whole lot of control of what happens in that, but it’s something our players are looking forward to, and hoping that we get the opportunity to play in that tournament.”
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