By Lorne Starko /
Consistency. Good teams have it.
It’s something that has eluded the Red Deer Rebels this season and last.
And as a result, the team has been in the basement of the Central Division of the Western Hockey League this year.
But head coach Jesse Wallin is the eternal optimist. He hasn’t given up on returning the Rebels to the playoffs after the club missed the post-season last year for the second time in three seasons.
“Overall, I think we’re feeling good about things right now,” said Wallin. “Would we love to have a few more wins and be a little higher in the standings? Yeah, for sure. But we all knew that coming into this season, we had a lot of ground to make up. I think we’ve made pretty good strides and we continue to do that. We want to be a playoff team. We expect to be a playoff team. That’s the mentality we have in our dressing room. We won six of eight games (before the Christmas break). The guys are feeling confident. We’re looking to carry this on over the second half of the season.”
What bothers Wallin is the Rebels powerplay, which he says is still a work in progress. The team is in the bottom third of the league in that category and Wallin knows it has to improve.
“We’ve got to move the puck quicker and recognize situations quicker,” Wallin says. “We seem to struggle reading plays and reading pressure. We bring the puck back into pressure too often. We have had some opportunities. I think our powerplay has been better as far as creating opportunities. When we do get those opportunities, we’ve got to bear down on them and put the puck in the net. Hopefully, we can get the powerplay going in the second half and have it be a difference for us.”
Wallin says there were some games just before the break that were tighter than they should have been. He says they focused on being a real disciplined team this year and accomplished that because they have had more powerplays than penalty kills. Wallin says he’d like that to be the difference for the Rebels over the second half.
Wallin says the Rebels were better with their forecheck in the last few games before the break and the penalty kill was also better. He likes how the team has improved and that the players have gained confidence. Wallin says part of it is being confident in their play in the third period of games.
As for the goaltenders, Wallin is confident in rookie Darcy Kuemper who recorded three shutouts in the first half and who took over the starter’s job from veteran Morgan Clark.
The Rebels didn’t have the 18-year-old Clark in their future plans and the day before the WHL trading deadline, he was sent to the Swift Current Broncos for a fifth round pick in the 2010 Bantam Draft. The Rebels added 16-year-old netminder Cam Gorchynski to their roster. He had been playing with the Fraser Valley Bruins of the B.C. Major Midget Hockey League. The Rebels had chosen Gorchynski in the 2007 Bantam Draft.
“Our goaltending has been pretty solid outside of a few games,” states Wallin. “There have been a few hiccups here. Every team needs that, whether you’re a winning team, a first place team or a team that’s down in the standings. You need your goaltending to be good if you’re going to have any chance.” |