After last week’s frenzy of off-ice activity, Flin Flon Bombers head coach and general manager Mike Reagan expects the team to stay as is for a little while.
“We’re going to assess what we’ve got for a team right now,” he told me after Saturday’s 7-0 throttling of the Melville Millionaires.
Teams must cut down to 25 carded players by Dec. 1, and Reagan expects his team to easily be under that number, with some room to move before the Jan. 10 trade deadline. That’s when rosters have to be finalized.
Dustin Perrilat was expected to be back this week, but he has been asked to stay in Moose Jaw for a while yet with the Western Hockey League’s Warriors.
As a coach, you have to be happy for a player when he gets called up. Not only is it a good opportunity for the player who gets called up, but it is also a good opportunity for someone else to step up and shine in his absence.
Tough decisions
If Perrilat returns, the Bombers have eight defencemen and Reagan will have some tough decisions to make with respect to getting down in numbers.
Leading the Bombers on the back end, at least in terms of games played this season, have been Rob Cameron, Danys Chartrand, Tanner Lishchynsky, Braden Lacoursiere and Mason Etter.
Brandon Masson has been in and out of the line-up, with Tyler Bell seeing action in all seven games since being assigned to the Bombers from the WHL. Even if Perrilat sticks with the Warriors, the team is still in good hands.
Switching gears a bit, the Bombers just completed their 20th game of the season. Other than a bit of trouble with the Melfort Mustangs recently, the team has been rolling along at quite a clip.
The Bombers and Mustangs have played each other five times so far this season. That’s a quarter of Flin Flon’s games!
The Bombers have only lost three times in regulation, and two of those games were at the hands of the Mustangs.
Fortunately, it’s how you finish that is important, not how you start. In their last meeting, the Bombers beat the Mustangs in a shootout, in Melfort.
Their next meeting is on Dec. 3 in Melfort, and you can bet both teams have that one circled on the calendar.
