Lucas Punkari
Even though they have a pair of pre-season tournaments under their belts, the anticipation for the opening games of the NorWOSSA regular season is easy to see on the faces of those involved with the Muskie girls’ hockey team.
“I think going in there is always a little bit of excitement, and a little bit of nervousness,” admitted Grade 11 defender Nicole Horn.
“Before the games, you’ll be sitting there in the dressing room just thinking to yourself, ‘This is it’, and you know that as soon as you go out onto the ice, that you are going to have to go out and give it your all,” she added.
This weekend will be a busy one for the black-and-gold, who first will travel to Thief River Falls, Mn. for an exhibition game against the Prowlers on Friday night.
“I think that this will be a great opportunity for the girls, especially with that game being the home-opener for Thief River Falls,” head coach Scott Clendenning noted.
“If you have ever watched a hockey game in the state of Minnesota, you know that there is probably going to be a really large crowd, and it will be an exciting high energy for the girls to be a part of.
“Even though we haven’t seen them before, all we can ask the girls to do is to just go out and be the best that you can be, and to make sure that you do all of the little things right,” he added.
The Muskies then will host the Dryden Eagles on Saturday at 7:15 p.m. at the Ice For Kids Arena, followed by a 1:15 p.m. tilt on Sunday against the visiting Red Lake Rams.
Even though the black-and-gold have yet to cross paths with the Eagles so far this season, both Horn and Clendenning feel that game should be a competitive one.
“There’s a little bit of a rivalry there between us, and I think that it should be a fairly even game between us,” Horn said.
“We really need to be firing on all cylinders, especially since it’s a league game,” stressed Clendenning.
“And if we can do that, we will hopefully have a really good start to the season.”
As for Red Lake, the Muskies went up against them during the round-robin portion of a tournament here last month, with the black-and-gold skating to a convincing 8-2 victory.
“We came out really strong in that game, and that was probably our best game of the entire tournament,” Clendenning recalled.
“They have a few really good skaters on that team, and you can’t underestimate them at all.
“So if we can compete at the same level that we did earlier this year, we should be able to get a win out of that,” he reasoned.
Heading into NorWOSSA action this weekend, the Muskies have taken part in two pre-season tournaments, including a win in their home tourney and a runner-up finish on the ‘B’ side of one in Winnipeg.
“For me, every practice and every game that we play is a building block for the remainder of the season,” Clendenning explained.
“My goal as a coach to have the girls get better all of the time, getting them to compete, and, most importantly, get them to play consistently.”
While it’s still quite early in the grand scheme of things, Horn feels the early practices and tournaments have helped to build the team up towards getting their NorWOSSA campaign underway.
“We’re working as a team lot more and we are getting a lot better as we go along, especially in how we are talking with one another out on the ice,” she noted.
“In our first tournament here, we would only talk to the person beside us and tell them, ‘Okay go further, I got your back behind you.’
“And now after our tournament, we have everyone all over the ice saying, ‘Go deep, go wide.’
“Communication is such a huge part of the game, and right now we know where everybody is out there so that when one of us messes up, someone is always going to be there behind you to back you up,” Horn added.
Following their weekend slate here, the Muskies will travel to Kenora on Tuesday night (Nov. 15) for their first meeting of the league campaign against the Broncos, with their next contest taking place here next Friday night (Nov. 18) when Sioux Lookout comes to town.
Meanwhile, the Muskie boys’ hockey team will be looking to build off its pre-season tournament win in Dryden two weekends ago as they will begin their NorWOSSA campaign on the road against the Eagles on Sunday.
The black-and-gold then will travel to Kenora on Tuesday (Nov. 15) before heading to Morden, Man. for a tournament next weekend.
Their NorWOSSA home-opener is slated for Tuesday, Nov. 22 against Kenora at the Ice For Kids Arena.
