Josh Lockhart
The Kimberley Dynamiters have not played a home game since the home opener on September 8th, and are finally returning home after four road games. They return home in first place in the Eddie Mountain division with eight points, only losing one road game.
Up first is the Castlegar Rebels (3-1-0-0-1) who sit fourth in the Neil Murdoch division with six points. This will be the first of three meetings between the Rebels and Dynamiters. Nitros’ head coach and general manager Derek Stuart is keenly aware that the Rebels have two of the top players in the Kootenay Conference in John Moeller (5G-5A) and Ed Lindsey (2G-6A), but says that the team will not change their style and just play Nitro’s hockey.
“We are just going to focus on playing our style of hockey and see if our opponents keep up or not.” Stuart said, “We still need to get our identity, we need to worry about ourselves.”
That approach may be beneficial for the Nitro’s, because the Rebels roster appears to have more than two scoring threats as forward Shawn Campbell and defender Vince Bitoni have emerged early as more than a point-per-game players.
Next up is the Golden Rockets (1-4-1-0) on Saturday, a team that the Nitros beat 5-2 in Golden last weekend. Stuart is optimistic that the team has learned their lesson to not take a team lightly after beating them, which happened against the Columbia Valley Rockies.
“We are going to prepare the same way we did last Saturday [against Golden]. If the players don’t respond or are not prepared, or take Golden lightly, it is a clear indicator that they have not learned their lesson from the Columbia Valley game and we have some work to do.
But he added, “I trust the guys, I believe their response to Golden [last week] showed that they have learned their lesson.”
Most of all, the Dynamiters are just excited to be back home playing in their own barn where they can use their speed on a larger ice surface.
“We try and tailor a team that fits our home ice more than anything else. I really liked the use of our speed in three of our four road games.
“To be able to use that on a bigger ice surface, should be to our advantage – but we need to do that first, to make it an advantage.”
Friday’s game against Castlegar starts at 7:30pm at the Civic Centre, and then puck drop is 7:30 on Saturday versus Golden.
