The Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey team finds itself facing some extra pressure heading into the weekend.
The team surprisingly dropped its first two games at home to the Mount Royal Cougars, one more home loss than all of last season when the Huskies went 13-1 at Merlis Belsher Place.
Head coach Dave Adolph said he might deserve a good chunk of the blame.
“I think the head coach just didn’t have his team ready to play,” Adolph said.
“I’ll be honest with you, we didn’t do enough exhibition or pre-season games. We had a really compact schedule. I underestimated how important exhibition games were and I put our guys in a tough spot.”
The Huskies had a bye week last weekend and were left to stew on those losses for two weeks.
“It’s the worst thing in the world,” Adolph said.
“Even if you win, you want to use that momentum and keep playing and when you lose, you just want to play the next day. You know, I’m not sure who voted for the bye but I know I wasn’t the guy.”
Huskies forward Levi Cable said the bye week gave the team time to work on some basics.
“We had to sit with it a little longer and we couldn’t get back at it. After two losses, you usually want to get right back at it and get that out of the way,” Cable said.
“We had an extra week to work on things and we are hoping to bring that forward to this weekend.”
The Huskies take on the defending Canada West champions, the Alberta Golden Bears, in Edmonton on Oct. 11 and 12.
“Guys are fired up to face the U of A. It doesn’t matter if it’s playoffs, regular season,” said Huskies captain Tanner Lishchynsky.
“We don’t like them, and they don’t like us so I think everyone is excited.”