The Kimberley Dynamiters had their main camp from Aug. 21 to Sept. 1 and are now preparing for the first exhibition game of the season on Saturday, Sept. 7 at the Civic Centre against the Fernie Ghostriders.
"Camp was good, really good," said head coach and general manager Derek Stuart. "We had two good days with a lot of guys competing, it was good to see."
The team will have around 17 veteran players returning to their ranks, a few coming from other programs, but 14 or 15 are back from last year's team. Stuart said the obvious big returning name is Tristan Weill, who last year was the team's leading scorer, was voted Most Popular Player by the fans, and was named best forward as well as the MVP for the team as well as the entire Eddie Mountain Division. Weill had 38 goals and 33 assists in 36 games played and likely would have been the KIJHL's points leader were it not for a period of illness and injury.
Stuart is also excited to have the some of the team's top defencemen back in Jackson Murphy, Callan Valstar, Nicholas Hughes, Trey Stepheonson and Conner Grainger.
"We’re looking pretty strong to start the season, we’re a much better team than we were last year at this time," Stuart said.
Following their elimination from the first round of the playoffs, something that hasn't happened in 11 years, and a poor showing at the year-end Mowat Cup, the veteran players are coming back with a serious desire for redemption.
"It’s very noticeable," Stuart said. "I’ve had a couple of the new veterans and even a couple of parents comment on how determined the returning guys look. Last year didn’t necessarily end the way we wanted it to. With that many guys back with that sour taste in their mouth, they’ve come here without being told, they’re determined and there’s a sense of urgency already."
At the time of writing on Wednesday, Sept. 4 the team was prepping for fitness testing later that afternoon, but Stuart said that from what he could see it looks like most of the players worked hard to keep in good shape throughout the summer and are ready to hit the ice on Saturday's exhibition.
Weill is certainly one of those players who would like to see some better results this year, especially considering he missed a good chunk of the mid-season last year.
"Weill is definitely in great shape again and looks quick out there," Stuart said. "Once we get down to our numbers at the start of the season, we’ll definitely have Riley Langille back on one of his wings and we acquired a really good player from Revelstoke in Bennett Kuhnlein, who’s looking really good. So definitely no shortage of players to play with him."
Kuhnlein was acquired by way of a somewhat surprising trade for goaltender Ryder Ponto. With goalie Matt Fleet aging out, Ponto was expected to step into a larger role for the team, and had proved to be a valuable asset every time he was in net throughout the 2023/24 season.
That trade, Stuart explained, wasn't the team's doing. It was a request from Ponto.
"He had his own reasons that I won’t get into, but he didn’t like it here and we don’t want anybody here that doesn’t want to be here," Stuart explained. "It’s the first player in my eight and a half years here that’s requested a trade out of Kimberley, it’s a little bit of a unique decision, but it boils down to he didn’t want to be here, so we didn’t necessarily want to have him here.
"All things aside, Ryder’s a great goaltender but we’ve acquired Marc Samyn from Oceanside earlier in the summer and he looks fantastic so far in camp and again, we don’t want anybody here that doesn’t want to be here, so on that side of things it’s a good thing that he’s not here and we’re going to go with Marc and I think our team’s strong enough that he’ll be just fine."
In addition to the weekend camp, fitness evaluations and exhibition practices the team has also been doing some group bonding with the annual ski hill hike and some volunteer work out in the community, including bagging groceries at Save-on-Foods, which Stuart said are important aspects of the team-building process.
"It's very important," Stuart said. "We lost a bit of that during COVID, but we're planning on immersing ourselves in the community a lot this season like we have in the past.
"We’re just trying to lay the foundation of what we want our guys to do in terms of working hard and battling and competing and they had a great first exhibition practice yesterday and they’ve got a couple more before the weekend. We’ve got 30 guys right now, so we’re going to give some guys some honest chances to make this team and they’re excited to get going."
