The Soo Greyhounds are looking ahead to the task at hand.
A record-setting regular season is complete and the Greyhounds are ready for what the team hopes will be a long Ontario Hockey League playoff run.
“It’s been a long season, but it’s been a fun season for the kids. They’ve played exceptionally well,” Greyhounds Coach Drew Bannister said. “Now we need to take that over into the playoffs and get ourselves going and playing good hockey and playing the right way and just make sure we get ourselves in the right mindset.”
The Greyhounds enter the playoffs on the heels of a 55-7-3-3 record in the regular season but the team isn’t looking to crown itself as the OHL champions.
“We want to make sure we focus on the first task,” Bannister said. “We don’t want to look too far ahead of that. They’ll be a tough opponent. They’ve played us tough this year. It will be an exciting series.”
Bannister expects the Spirit, who posted a 29-30-9-0 regular season record, to make things tough on the Greyhounds.
“As a whole, they have good depth,” Bannister said. “They struggled down the stretch so I’m sure they’ll be happy to reset and get back to work. In the three years I’ve been here, they’ve played us really tough.”
“They play a physical hockey game,” Bannister added. “We have to be ready to be engages with them. That’s going to be a big part of the series.”
For the Spirit, Coach Troy Smith expects a team that will make life difficult on the Greyhounds.
“The agenda is obviously different for the Sault,” Smith said. “We want to win but our expectations have been the same throughout the whole year, we want to be a team that competes every night and plays for each other.”
In order to win games against the Greyhounds Smith called turnovers critical and the Spirit will look to make smart plays with the puck.
“We have to manage the puck and make sure that pucks are in deep against their defencemen,” Smith said, adding that discipline will also be key.
Another key for the Spirit will be the play of overage goaltender Evan Cormier.
The New Jersey Devils prospect will play a roll in Saginaw’s success in the series.
“My message was simple (and it’s) make the saves he’s supposed to make,” Smith said. “With the ability that Evan has, I’m sure he’ll make some saves that maybe he shouldn’t make.”
“He’s one of the better goalies in the league and he’s played well against us,” Bannister said.
The Spirit will be without veteran Brady Gilmour early in the series, but Smith says the Detroit Red Wings prospect is day-to-day and could return to action in the series. Gilmour has been out of the lineup since mid-January but “he’s slowly making progress.”
Puck drop for Friday’s series opener is 7:07 p.m. with game two set for Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. before the series shifts to Saginaw for games three and four on Monday and Wednesday nights.