A pre-season opening loss for the Fort McMurray Oil Barons has Head Coach Tom Keca looking ahead to tomorrow’s rematch. The MOB fell 7-4 to the Whitecourt Wolverines icing a lineup with just a single 1995 born player and a slew of young kids under eighteen.
“We dressed four veterans and we had a very rookie laden lineup, guys battled hard,” said Keca. “The stuff at the end [a pair of fights broke out in the last few minutes of play] there’s part of you that doesn’t want that to happen because it’s exhibition […] we had some guys that stepped up and didn’t miss a beat and we had other guys that were stuck underneath the bench and hoping their number wasn’t called.”
16-year-old goaltender Nate Reinhart turned aside 17 of 20 shots fired his way, while Eric Szudor seemed to struggle at times under what looked like a tired defence allowing four goals on 22 shots. The pair split the game between the pipes for the Oil Barons.
“I thought Reinhart did a great job he kept us right in the game, I thought [Szudor]was a little shell shocked there I don’t know if our guys got a little tired with the powerplays,” said the Head Coach.
It was also Keca’s first chance to see one of the MOB’s off-season acquisitions in Jake Wozny, “he’s a very smart player he’s an offensive guy, he showed that today, created a lot and had some points which was good. He delivered exactly as promised.”
Connor McCallum, a former Oil Baron once coached by Keca wore the captains ‘C’ above his heart for the match. The off-season acquisition is expected to be a big part of the MOB’s leadership group in his final season of Junior eligibility.
“Connor is a guy that we’re not necessarily going to rely on to be a primary goal scorer he’s going to be a secondary guy for us but he’s going to provide leadership,” noted Keca. “I thought that he did that during crucial times throughout the game.”
No cuts will be made after tonight’s game those will wait until after the game on Saturday night.
Mac Mindus, Cody Hodgson, Salvatore Scalise and Jake Wozney scored the four Oil Barons goals on 23 shots.
The MOB will try to split their pre-season series with Whitecourt at 6 p.m. tomorrow night. If you can’t make it to the rink Rock 97.9 will be carrying the game live.
