Mid Off-Season Report With Rich Preston

Here's hoping things are going well.

Not much going on hockey-wise for the Lethbridge Hurricanes at the moment. I guess the the rain and flooding across southern Alberta has been taking front and centre stage the past week and I've been in Edmonton the last couple of days where I received, on behalf of the CJOC News & Sports Deprtment an award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for having the best small market radio newscast on the prairies in 2009. A very nice honour for our newsroom and radio station, but a few days ago I had a chance to sit down for lunch with Hurricanes Head Coach/G.M. Rich Preston to talk a little bit of hockey, in somewhat of a middle of the off-season report and look ahead to training camp which is slated to start the first week of September this year. Preston and I covered a number of topics. Here's the interview:

Pat: Taking a look over the next couple of months leading up to training camp, give us some insight of what's coming up.

Preston: "The Eastern Conference has scheduling meetings coming up in Saskatoon. Looking forward to camp, we're really happy with our bantam draft back in April. We've got some really good players. You know, the big thing for me and our players is that it's going to be a very competitive training camp and that's what you want. You have to have competition from within your organization and we'll definitely have that this year. We didn't have much of that this past season because of numbers. For instance, we have seven returning defencemen from last year and three more knocking on the door. That will probably be our most competitive position. We have a rookie goalie (Anderson) coming back who had a strong first year I thought. We also have eleven retuning forwards and there are a couple of 17 year olds that we know can play in the WHL and a wack of 16 year old forwards that know they can play and want to play. Obviously we can't keep six 16 year olds, but there'll be a lot of competition there to."

Pat: Do you expect to be busy at all in terms of trades or acquisitions in the next few months before camp?

Preston: "Well, there is very little done in the summer. I think once training camp opens and teams see where they're at as far as retuning players, you know some players they'll lose to the pro ranks, some will go to college, and some kids come back as 17 year olds and they're bigger, stronger and a lot better athletes, so a team really doesn't know where it's at until camp or just after. From my perspective, compared to last year I think it'll be very quiet."

Pat: Rich, you've now had a full year running this team. Do you now have a better idea of what you have in the system and what you need going into this new season?

Preston: "Well, that's the big thing Pat. The toughest thing for me last year was not knowing the 50 player list, barely even knowing the players on the team that played the year before and now this year I know every player on that list and having seen them all play and knowing who's coming to try to make the team and knowing what we have coming down the road in the future is a lot more comforting as a G.M. and Head Coach!"

Pat: With the scheduling meetings going on next week, I know the Hurricanes will start on the road again for the first couple of weeks because of the ENMAX Centre renovations, will Lethbridge fans get a chance this year to actually see a pre-season game a bit closer to home this time?

Preston: "Yeah! It was important being away for the first 8 games last season and our fans never got a chance at all to see us, we are going to, this coming season play an exhibition game at Nicholas Sheran Arena in mid-September. The fans will get a chance then to see some of our younger kids. We will play six exhibition games in total, but one at Nicholas Sheran. We only play five road games this season before our first home game to start the regular season because the league starts a week later this year. So this will be a little better."

Pat: You must be happy with the way the draft went and what you have going forward in the system?

Preston: "Yeah Pat, we're stocked pretty good here. We're pretty deep in our 94's and 95's. I'm really happy with the kids we have and there's a good balance of defence and forwards. A lot of these kids have bright futures and for us the future in this coming season and we've got to keep building towards the playoffs and I really believe we'll do that this coming year."

Pat: One last question. The Euro draft is at the end of June and since you've decided that (G) Ville Kolppanen won't be coming back, what direction do you go with that one spot?

Preston: "We'll see. We have Jacob Berglund coming back. He's a real good player, a big kid that's 205 pounds. He can play the wing and centre. With the other open spot you don't know until you talk to some scouts, agents, and of course some NHL teams will draft Europeans and they like to bring them over and play in our league, so we'll see how that goes."

Thanks,
Pat