Tyler Fiveland, the new head coach of Stampeders, promises a rebirth and build-up for the team that should see Ponoka’s representative in the Junior Heritage Hockey League at least secure a playoff place this season.
Speaking in an interview as Stampeders prepare for their first of two tryouts to take place in Penhold in the coming days, sounded enthusiastic and optimistic about their chances this season with their new recruitment drive and the enthusiasm they have witnessed among the young players expressing their wish to join the team.
The second tryout will take place in Ponoka immediately after the Penhold event.
“We have had one inquiry from Toronto and one from Vancouver,” said Fiveland, referring to the scope of the interest they have seen so far this summer.
“It should look good this year. We had a very good turnout at the spring camp.”
Although he hasn’t had any coaching experience with a Junior Heritage League team before, Fiveland says he has coached quite a number of midget teams Wetaskiwin, Winfield and Millet, leading some of those teams to championship titles, and believes his young age (he turned 30 last Sunday) will be an advantage for him to establish lines of communications with his players.
Asked what he would primarily aim at bringing to the Stampeders team, Fiveland responded “some stability and hopefully some leadership with the kids out there.”
Fiveland says he has talked to some of the players who were members of the Stampeders team in the last few years to identify the problems that hampered the success of the team and that he plans to change some of the ways things were done.
“It’s a kind of fresh start,” he explained.
Her said he was very impressed with the skills of some of the players he saw at the spring camp and he said he believed most of the players could be taught finer skills to perfect their games.
Looking at last year’s game scores, he said it was so obvious that many of last year’s games were lost with a single goal difference or in overtime and that it showed those games could have been turned into wins.
“If those games were won, Stampeders would have been a playoff team,” Fiveland said.
Underlining that his primary goal this season was to become a playoff team before thinking of targeting league title, Fiveland said he was pretty confident they would have a good performance.
The new coach also said this year and next, the Stampeders would have a rather old team with many 19- and 20-year-olds, but he felt this period should be used to build up a younger team for future seasons.