INNISFAIL – It’s now or maybe never.
After several years of heartbreak and disappointment, the Innisfail Eagles say they are ready to work and bring an Allan Cup home to Innisfail.
The national senior amateur men's hockey championship tournament is being hosted in Lacombe this coming April.
“I get tingles up my spine when I think about this season,” said Ryan Dodd, general manager and assistant coach for the Innisfail Eagles. “This means everything. This is the season we’re going to make the big push (for the Allan Cup).”
After several weeks of practice in the pre-season, the Eagles are ready to hit the ice and players know what’s expected of them this year.
“All (the players) ever say is this is our year, this is our season,” said Dodd. “They’re focused. They’ve got one goal and it’s to play the final game of the season.”
The Innisfail Eagles AAA senior men’s hockey team will open the 2018-19 regular season against the Stony Plain Eagles at home on Oct. 6.
“We’ve been skating since September 5. We’ve had guys out skating, getting a feel for the puck and knocking off a little bit of that rest that we all built up in the summertime,” said Dodd, noting an exhibition weekend at the end of September in Lacombe gave the team a chance to showcase several potential new players.
“We’ve got about 12 to 15 new players trying out right now. We will be adding a new goaltender to the mix this season,” he said. “We’ve also had Danyon Lorencz (son of the late Dez Lorencz) out skating with us as well.”
Dodd said with their hard work over the past several weeks players will be ready when the puck drops on the regular season.
“We skated four times in Innisfail (for pre-season practices). We had a really good practice and had a lot of guys out for practice last night,” he added. “It was four lines of solid, fast hockey.”
Dodd said start time for their home opener on Oct. 6 has changed to 6 p.m. (from 8:30 p.m.) at the Innisfail Arena.
“That’s going to open it up so families can come down and bring their kids down,” said Dodd, noting there will be a couple of tributes for opening night. “It should be a pretty exciting evening.”
