The last dress rehearsal for the St. Albert Raiders before the curtain rises on the midget AAA hockey season is Sunday’s exhibition against the Leduc Oil Kings.
Puck drop is 3:45 p.m. at Akinsdale Arena.
“We’ll see how we look at that point and what our line-up shakes down to be,” said head coach Sandro Pisani. “We’ll look to put people in positions where we feel they are best suited.”
The 2012 provincial finalists are slowly building a winning identity.
“We’re not quite sure if we’ve got the right people to create the identity we think we have. We haven’t really dressed a line-up we feel that maybe is our strongest line-up yet. We’re still looking at different people in different situations and see where they fit best,” Pisani said.
The Raiders have about 30 players in camp. They are sorting out the netminding situation, there is scoring skill up front and on the blue-line there are more candidates than roster spots.
“Offensively we should be fairly deep,” Pisani said. “The biggest battle has been on defence. It’s really been difficult to kind of decipher which ones we feel are the best fit. We have a lot of them that seem to be clumped together and have very much a lot of the same attributes so we’re trying to work through that and find out who best suits the style of play that we want to employ.”
The Raiders are 2-1-1 in pre-season action after Wednesday’s 4-2 loss to the Southside Athletic Club in St. Albert. Pisani said the team played well in stretches.
“In the second period we had a real strong period of hockey. We capitalized on some of our opportunities and we ended up being tied after two, which was a little disappointing after playing a good period,” he said. “In the third period we were uninspired. We didn’t play very well so we have to look and evaluate that and ask ourselves why that is.”
League play starts next weekend. The Raiders host the Sherwood Park Kings on Saturday at 1:15 p.m. and Sunday they play the KC Pats at 11:45 a.m. at Bill Hunter Arena.
