It’s been a long time coming for the Brooks Bandits.
But after years of hard paintings getting ready each on and rancid the ice to host the National Jr. A Championship, dubbed the RBC Cup, it will kick off Saturday night in Brooks.
“From an organizational point of view, it’s been two years inside the making, so there are quite a few human beings in this community which have put in quite a much time and effort,” said Bandits head train Ryan Papaioannou, who this week became nominated for Canadian Junior Hockey League train of the yr. “It’s fine to see all their efforts come to fruition.
“From a training aspect, we’re excited and geared up to play. I assume our guys had been bored all week training, but I am just looking forward to getting to the ice (Saturday) night.”
The match will function as the cream of the crop when it comes to Jr. A talent in Canada.
While the Bandits play host and constitute the Alberta Junior Hockey League, they will be visited by four other groups.
The Prince George Spruce Kings represented the British Columbia Hockey League, while the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Portage Terriers will also be there.
The Oakville Blades are from the Ontario Junior Hockey League, with the Central Canada Hockey League’s Ottawa Jr. Senators coming in together.
At least this kind of team is a familiar face – the Spruce Kings, who the Bandits squared off in opposition to a remaining weekend in the Doyle Cup.
It became an affair that the BCHL champion, Spruce Kings, defeated the Bandits in six video games.
“When you get championship groups, expectancies go out the window, and you’ve got to get out on the ice and play,” said Papaioannou of the collection. “I thought they were exceptional in their building; we have been quite desirable in ours. We struggled up there; we had no solution for their depth and speed. The oddity turned when we were in Brooks was that we had a solution for all that stuff. It’ll be fun to peer them again.
“I suppose throughout the year,e yr I don’t assume we confronted sufficient adversity, to be able to lose lower back-to-again video games for the first time all year (in the Doyle Cup) and then to lose three video games in a row, I don’t see it as a huge terrible. I think it’s going to be a big-time advantage. If we use it as a mastering en experience, we will take it oppositely and let the loss keep. I assume our guys are clever enough to comprehend that it’s all championships teams here, and we must be true.”
Looking beforehand to the RBC Cup, the Bandits are going to be seeking to re-ignite some of the offensive prowess that helped make them one of the nice seasons in AJHL records; it changed into a year that saw them publish a regular-season record of fifty seven-3, becoming the primary crew ever to file fifty-seven wins and 112 points inside the AJHL, all the even as placing a brand new league document with a 33-game everyday-season win streak.
“I assume we’re going to want to begin getting scoring from all of our lines again,” said Papaioannou. “Throughout the year, we scored at a pretty excessive clip, and we did simply first-class within the playoffs. In the Prince George’s series, we are an excellent protective team, scoring from one line consistently, and that’s it. It’s pretty hard to win with one-line scoring, and I suppose that’s the huge key — everybody getting their offense again feeling appropriate.”
Game one of the RBC Cup will see the Jr. Senators and the Terriers rectangular off Saturday at 2 p.m., even as the Bandits play their first game in opposition to the Blades at 7 p.m. That night.
