KAMLOOPS — Blazers players who are not already here will be arriving tomorrow.
The first COVID test is set for Sunday.
Then a few more days of quarantining, another test on Wednesday, and if all comes back clear, hit the ice next Friday.
That will given them seven days of practice before the first game on Friday, March 26.
Assembling a roster for a 24 game season isn’t the same as it would be before a regular 68 game schedule.
The roster for the shortened season is already set.
The Blazers will play the season with 23 players on roster.
It’s a younger team than a year ago, with the average age brought down with six 16-year olds, where normally there might be two or three.
“As far as the 16 year olds, we’re allowed to dress four.” says Blazers head coach Shaun Clouston. “The league doesn’t want teams just playing their young guys because ‘oh, this is a development season.’ We’ve got some older players in the league — this is still important for them.”
The average age was brought down further this week with the addition of 15 year old defenseman Kaden Hammel, the Blazers first pick in the 2020 bantam draft.
Normally 15 year olds can be brought up and down from their minor hockey teams for a limited to the number of games.
Theoretically Hammel could play in all 24 games this season.
“What’s happened is we haven’t been able to do those things, so that’s why they’re making this exception.” says Clouston. “You can’t just join and then go back — they’ve allowed for one roster spot there for that player.”
From goaltending out Clouston says the depth of the team is different at different positions.
“Obviously we’re going to have great goaltending.” says Clouston. “Dylan Garand got some American League action in.”
Garand’s backup will be 16-year old Dylan Ernst.
“Our back end is not overly young. We lose a couple of key players there, but we still have Strange and Onyebuchi, who are top shutdown guys. We have Schmiemann and Baragano back, and Lindgren is a great up and coming player, he’s a 16 year old. We lose a lot up front.” says Clouston. “We were going to lose a lot and then with Stewy (Brodi Stuart) and Sopo (Kyrell Sopotyk) we got really young and had to fill in with some younger guys. We won’t have as much depth. We’ll need some guys to step. We have some high end guys still — Centazzo, Zary and Stankoven —- everybody will expect those guys to do a big part of our scoring, but we’re going to need more than that.”
