Less than a week after getting shutout 5-0 at home in their exhibition debut, the Golden Rockets fared a little better in their second, and final, warmup game at home on Sept. 4, losing 4-1 to the Revelstoke Grizzlies.
That loss was sandwiched between a 5-4 win over the Columbia Valley Rockeis on Sept. 3 and an 8-1 drubbing at the hands of the Grizzlies the following night in Revelstoke.
With just seven goals in their four preseason games, goal scoring has been a challenge for Golden in the early going, but head coach Jason Stephens says he isn’t concerned.
“I think it’s coming together, you can’t panic in exhibition,” Stephens said, while pointing out that some talented forwards were due to be sent down to the Rockets in the coming days following Junior A tryouts.
On Friday night at home, Brennan Fuoco got the Rockets on the board early with a PP marker, giving the home faithful reason to celebrate, but it was mostly all Grizzlies from there. The Rockets managed to hit a couple of posts, one coming on a beautiful second period shot by Tanner Wit that struck the far post squarely, but couldn’t find another goal the rest of the night.
Not in the lineup was last year’s leading scorer Ian Desrosier, who paced the Rockets with 31 goals and 55 points a year ago but sat out the Friday night contest as veterans often do in the pre-season.
Desrosier, a Golden native, was named captain by Stephens last week.
“It’s definitely an honour..he had 21 guys in there to pick from and he chose me,” he said.
“Especially playing at home here.”
It wasn’t always a sure thing that the 20-year old would return for a final season in Golden, but he says the early impression he got from his first-year head coach helped sway him to come back for one more year.
“He definitely changed my mind about coming back. Just talking to him in the off-season, it seemed like he knew a lot of stuff, he had a lot of good ideas about the way we were headed this year so that definitely changed my mind around for sure,” he said.
The 5’11” forward, who becomes the second consecutive local to be named captain after Daniel Dahlin, says that he plans to lead both on the ice and in the locker room. He’s also reached out to his former captain for some advice as he prepares to sport the ‘C’.
“I’ve learned from a lot of good captains over the years. I think I’ll be able to get the guys going a lot and make sure that the team’s always focused. I’m pretty excited to have the opportunity to be the leader of the team.”
The Rockets will get their regular season underway on Friday (Sept. 11) when they host the Kamloops Storm. They’ll close out the opening weekend with a road date against the defending champion Kimberley Dynamiters the following night.
