The Kimberley Dynamiters have signed on three new players to the roster as a new, and hopefully normal, season draws closer and closer.
All born in 2003, the three newest Nitros are Jaydon Gordey and Denon Bamber, two forwards from Grand Prairie, Alta. who played on the AAA GP Storm last season and Koden Lazar coming from the U18 AAA Lethbridge Hurricanes.
The Dynamiters have a connection with Denon Bamber already as his brother Derian played with the team from 2017 to 2019.
“He’s come down and he’s very familiar with everything about the organization, right down to Derian’s billets,” Dynamiters head coach and general manager Derek Stuart said. “He knew enough about Kimberley that it was not too hard of a sell job in terms of himself, he’s more of a setup forward and definitely an offensive threat and we’re happy to have him on board.”
Bamber has also played a lot of hockey with Gordey, and Stuart suspects that’s a big part of the Dynamiters being able to snag him up.
“He was sought after by many teams,” Stuart explained. “He’s more of a goal scorer, he’s again an offensive threat and I think we’re going to definitely lean on those two guys to provide some offensive abilities and chip in on the offensive side but they can also play the other end of the game too. But Jaydon for sure can score goals and we expect him to do that here for us.”
Lazar stands at around 6’3” or 6’4” on his skates, but can still really move, Stuart says, and he looks forward to having him help out in the Dynamiters’ physical department.
“He had a good season offensively a couple years ago in AA as a 16-year-old,” Stuart said, “so I think he can chip in offensively as well, but he’s a hard-working big body to play against so he’ll help us a lot as well.”
Stuart said he always enjoys going through the recruitment process, thought this year was obviously quite a bit different due to COVID essentially nixing all of last year’s season.
Fortunately he was able to watch enough video and talk to enough people to know that these three new recruits come extremely highly recommended, and he knows they all had exceptional years as 16-year-olds in Midget AA.
All three of them had in fact made their Midget AAA teams this year, but unfortunately they weren’t able to play, but they are all still highly regarded hockey players.
The three of them are expected to be training independently in the mean time so they are in peak physical condition for when the start of the season arrives.
“They need to be in the best shape they can be and the signing to me means they have a spot to lose on the hockey team, that’s all it is,” Stuart said. It doesn’t guarantee anything throughout the course of the year. So they need to be in shape and they need to be ready to go and I’ve talked to all three and I’m pretty certain that they will be.”
This should be it for signings for the immediate future, but there are some other guys the Dynamiters have talked to that are interested in signing on. It’s just a matter of waiting to see what happens with the Junior A teams and when their camps take place.
At this point, all signs from the government and viaSport are indicating that they should be allowed to start training camps by July 15 and that come September they should be able to start their season, potentially even with fans in the seats.
“I’ll wait until I see fans in the stands with my own eyes before I get excited,” Stuart said with a wry laugh. “After what we’ve been through over the last two years I’ll believe it when I see it, but everything seems positive and like we’re on the right track, so hopefully we can stay that way.”
paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin
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