Generals feeling right at home

What is old is new again.

Well, OK, maybe not new. But awesome? For sure.

Cochrane Generals Rick Richards general manager decided to turn back the hands of time last year when he moved the club out of the Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre and back into the old Cochrane Arena.

The rest is, like the building itself, history.

“It’s like a Junior A rink,” Richards says. “It’s an old barn. The fans are right on top of the players. My son played Junior A and almost every rink he was in was an old barn.

“The ice is better and the atmosphere was much better than at Spray Lake. At Spray Lake, if you had 100 people there, it looked like you had 10, whereas at the old rink, if you had 200 people, it looked full.

“It gets very loud. For a lot of our playoff games, we had 420 people in there and you couldn’t hear yourself think.”

So, safe to say there’s no regrets.

“You’ve gotta have that old feel,” Richards says. “I didn’t want people coming in where they could go play pick-up ball, go swimming, go climb a rock. I wanted them to come to the rink and all there was was hockey.

“Right away, we doubled our (attendance) numbers by doing that.

“People would come in and say ‘I love this rink. I’m so glad you moved. What took you so long?’”

The Generals will be looking to build off a solid 2018-19 campaign that saw them form one-third of the ‘Big 3’ (along with the Coaldale Copperheads and Okotoks Bisons) in the HJHL’s South Division.

Cochrane ripped off a dozen consecutive wins between Dec. 9 and Feb. 1 to close the season at 27-9-2, finishing just four points back of the first-place Copperheads.

And Richards says there’s no reason to believe the club won’t take a step forward this fall.

“Cochrane is all about development,” says Richards, who expects to have as many as 16 players back from last year. “So we’ll have one more year of them playing together.

“We’re a fast team. Some of the new guys coming to camp are high scorers, and we’ve got some more guys coming that can add some grit.

“We get kind of beat up in the playoffs because of our lack of size.”

There was a significant dropoff after Braden Bain’s team-leading 56 points, and Bain has moved on to college – he’ll suit up with Finlandia in Michigan.

But Richards isn’t too concerned about where the goals are going to come from.

“Some of the guys were starting to pop last year, and I think they’ll continue on,” Richards says. “And I think some of the new guys we’re bringing in will add quite a bit to that.

“But it will be a lot of (scoring) by committee.”

The Generals will have a new head coach as the look to get back on top of the mountain for the first time since winning back-to-back HJHL championships in 2008 and ’09.

Kurtis Jones takes over the bench after spending nearly a decade with the AJHL’s Canmore Eagles.

“He was with the Eagles for eight years,” Richards says. “He’s coached everything from pee wee to midget and everything between, so he has a lot of coaching under his belt.

“He’s very focused on development – of his players and coaches. He wants to see the progression.

“And he’s huge on being involved in the community.”

Once a month, the Generals will invite local minor hockey ’tenders to attend a goaltending session.

And Generals players will also be participating in practices with minor hockey teams.

“Most Sunday games will be Junior General Nights, where we invite teams from Cochrane Minor Hockey to come and watch the game, and they’ll get some food and they’ll get to see the players after the game and get some things signed,” Richards says.

The Generals will open the season when they host the defending-champion Airdrie Thunder on Sept. 21 (7:30 p.m.).