Storm forward Lukas Konashuk in pre-season action against Olds. Photo Credit: Shaun Penner

By Shane Clausing

Storm open season

Storm drop puck on 26th AJHL season in Drayton Valley

Sep 17, 2021 | 12:09 PM

The Grande Prairie Storm are set to kick off their 26^th season in franchise history in Drayton Valley this weekend.

This season will mark the return of what is hoped to be a full season of junior hockey in Alberta, after the pandemic has altered the league’s schedule since March of 2020.

The Storm enter the season with just 11 returning players, including a new group of goaltenders.

While the Storm finished with a pre-season record of 1-4, Head Coach and General Manager Mike Vandekamp isn’t looking into those games too much.

“I think our exhibition games were interesting. We had a lot of inexperienced guys playing in key situations. The first weekend was two good games with Olds, I think the road trip that we made was a really tough test for the players,” he explained.

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“It’s a three-game trip with a lot of bus travel playing in pretty tough barns, but it served its purpose and it allowed us an opportunity to see what players had to give. It allowed us an opportunity to make a couple of changes this week and get ready for the start of the season.”

While the Storm had a tough stretch of games, especially on their recent road trip against the rival Fort McMurray Oil Barons, Vandekamp says exhibition hockey is usually a little looser than the regular season.

“I think if you look at the scores, a lot of the games are quite high scoring because the structure is kind of lacking in the games,” he said. “It’s scrambled, it’s disorganized, players are playing with different players every night, you haven’t had a lot of time to put and structure in place.

“As hockey fans or media, really the game is a team game. When you don’t have your team game in order and your structure in order, it makes for lots of mistakes, lots of offense and I guess that’s why you saw that.”

With the full training camp now complete, Vandekamp says he feels he’s found his club’s identity for how they will look this season.

“I wouldn’t say that we have one or two guys or a specific line that’s going to go out there and lead the league in scoring, I think we’re going to be a team that has to play hard as a team,” he said.

“We’re going to have to learn to play with more structure, having a consistent effort, sticking together as a team. From an offensive standpoint, we’ll probably be a score by committee type of club.”

Vandekamp says his goals for this year are to get off to a good start, getting better all the time, finishing as high as they can, being competitive, and being playoff ready.

He also expects the AJHL’s North Division to be extremely competitive.

The Storm open the season with a doubleheader Friday and Saturday in Drayton Valley against the Thunder. Both games start at 7 p.m. and can be seen on HockeyTV.