Muskie boys expect another strong season

Do the math—76 hopefuls, only 20 available roster spots.
Of those 56 players who don’t make the Muskie boys’ hockey team this coming season, some will need a tissue box for the tears, some will need boxing gloves for the anger, and others just a simple pat on the back to help ease the disappointment.
Muskie head coach Shane Bliss is all too aware about those numbers—as well as the emotions that will follow when he must take those eager individuals to the side and tell them the disheartening news.
“It’s a really tough thing to do. We’ve had some great kids over the years that we’ve had to cut for whatever reason, and the tears start going in their eyes,” Bliss noted after the Muskies’ second tryout last Friday.
“I mean, it’s hard to take and it does bother me, but what can you do? I try to be positive and I try to send them off with some good thoughts,” added Bliss, who expects to have his roster set by this Friday.
The Muskies’ successful season in 2003-04 was “a pleasant surprise” as the team posted a regular-season record of 41-12-2 en route to a trip to the all-Ontarios in London.
Close to three-quarters of the players from last year’s team were back for the tryouts (only six were lost to graduation or to players moving up), but Bliss and his coaches have been disappointed with some of the returning players’ lackadaisical attitudes.
“The problem with getting a lot of players back is they come back with some complacency,” he remarked. “They just think that they can step on the ice and that’s it, they’ve made the team.
“The first year they’d be willing to go through a wall and after that they kind of take for granted that they are there, and don’t play as well as they can after that.
“A lot of these kids just think that they just have to show up and then they can play, but it’s not like that,” Bliss stressed. “And three-quarters of the parents believe that their kids are going to the NHL just by showing up to the rink.”
It can be a frustrating thing for a coach, added Bliss, when players don’t take the steps to improve during the off-season by following summer conditioning programs.
Bliss believes only a dozen or so of the players trying out for the Muskies this season have followed a serious program over the summer while three-quarters of the players for the Broncos team over in International Falls have been on a program all summer.
“It is very frustrating as a coach because those kids that aren’t willing to go out and do that extra work obviously have something missing, and then it’s always somebody else’s fault,” said Bliss.
The coaches usually are the first to have the fingers of blame pointed towards them, and almost always get those dreaded “phone calls” from parents who disagree with a decision that left their kid off the team.
“In a small community like Fort, you can never please everyone,” admitted Bliss. “I hope not to get any phone calls from the parents, and that’s why I talk to the kids themselves and tell them what we thought they need to work on.
“I’ve been cut myself and it doesn’t matter how many good things you say, the bottom line is that you got cut and you’re not happy about it,” added Bliss, who got cut from the local Bantam ‘AA’ squad but then made the Muskies that same season and won all-Ontario gold in 1986.
“Things always work out and kids don’t see it at the time. It’s hard to see that, but things do work out,” he reasoned.
Though some of the returning players have had lazy off-seasons, Bliss still believes the black-and-gold will enjoy a very good season. And judging from the large number of players trying out, the Muskie hockey program looks to be a contender for the next few seasons.
“It is early, but I think we should have a pretty strong team,” said Bliss. “There are some talented new players coming in and that might indicate that we will have a strong team for a couple of years to come if we can keep them around and playing in our system.”
But things won’t be easy for the team as two-time MVP Steve Sus looks like he’ll be playing for the Borderland Thunder this season, not the Muskies.
“We’ll probably miss around 80-90 points of his presence [Sus had 104 total points last season],” Bliss said of the loss.
“Steve logged so much ice time for us. He killed penalties, he was on the power play, and he would go on every other shift,” he added. “Steve showed up to play every time.”
Which probably was why it was so disheartening for Bliss when he discovered that Sus had tried out for the Thunder, and at last check will most likely make the Junior ‘A’ program.
“We’re going to miss him and we were surprised that he decided to go off and play for the Thunder, but I don’t blame him because the whole goal is to get the kids onto another level of hockey,” said Bliss.
“But I thought he was coming back,” he added. “We were going to do some work together as a team over the summer and he was always there, and he never gave me the impression that he was going off to play junior.
“I called him just to make sure because we were starting our tryout, and I told him good luck and hope he does well, but I just wanted to make sure,” Bliss remarked.
Under NorWOSSA rules, even if Sus played with the Thunder, he could come back to the Muskies at any point before Dec. 1. But even if Sus wanted to return, Bliss said he’s unsure if he would take him.
“I’d like to say, yes, I mean you don’t want to have a two-time MVP to not have anywhere to play,” Bliss said. But the problem there, though, is that somebody else would get bumped and that’s going to make that player really feel disappointed.
“It’s a tricky situation, but if we’re faced with it, then we’ll see how it would go,” he added.
But even without Sus, the Muskies are not hurting when it comes to players trying out for the team. No doubt a major reason for that is the fact the Muskies will host the all-Ontarios in 2006.
As such, wanting to field a strong team for the 2005-06 season is a factor in the roster the squad would field this season.
“I think it’s definitely something you have to think about,” said Bliss, who expects at least 100 guys to try out for next year’s club.
“All those older guys are older and stronger, and can play the game for us, but that would mean that next year we could be losing 10 guys.
“So we would have a team of rookies hosting the tournament and your chances aren’t that good,” stressed Bliss, who most likely will suit this year’s roster with a mix of rookies and veterans.
But for those who don’t make this year’s Muskie squad, Bliss hopes those players will take it as a challenge to come back next year better—and make the coaching staff’s decisions more difficult.
“I hope they get over it and become better from it. If they want to do it, they’ll do it,” he reasoned.