The Bentley Generals will be a tired bunch when they arrive in Clarenville. Nfld., at some point Sunday.
Luckily, the Alberta senior AAA hockey champions don’t enter into Allan Cup competition until Tuesday, when they’ll take on the host Clarenville Caribous at 4:30 p.m. MDT.
The Generals, who practised twice at Olds this week, will conduct one last on-ice workout Saturday evening in Calgary before boarding a 12:30 a.m. red-eye flight heading east.
Bentley will be loaded for bear in Newfoundland after finishing a disappointing fourth in last year’s Allan Cup tournament at Dundas, Ont., 12 months after capturing the Canadian senior AAA championship at the Red Deer Arena.
The current edition of the Generals is of a higher calibre than last year’s squad, yet still boasts a roster of Allan Cup savvy players such as Kyle Sheen, Kyle Bailey, Curtis Austring and Don Morrison. The club added the likes of forwards Torrie Dyck, a key player with the 2014 CIS champion University of Alberta Golden Bears, and Cam Maclise, the Brooks Bandits’ best player during their run to the Canadian junior A crown two years ago.
Another huge addition has been offensive defenceman Giffen Nyren, who suited up with the Lloydminster Border Kings in the 2012 Allan Cup tournament. While Nyren has Allan Cup experience, Dyck and Maclise do not, yet have played in national championships.
“It’s different, but similar in a way in that they’ve played at a high level with high expectations, so they can lean on that experience,” Generals head coach Ryan Tobler said Friday, in reference to Maclise and Dyck, the club’s top two scorers during the recent provincial/Chinook League playoffs.
Tobler didn’t dismiss the notion that the 2015 Generals are a more talented side than the 2014 Generals, however . . .
“Something tells me the tournament is going to be better too,” said Tobler.
“It’s all relative and we can kind of use last year as a learning experience.”
Tobler is in his second season as Bentley’s bench boss after serving as an assistant to Brandin Cote during the 2012-13 campaign.
“For myself, just being at the Allan Cup out of province last year was a new experience,” he noted. “It was a bit of an eye-opener and we can lean on that and hopefully be a little better prepared and know what to expect playing the host team right off the hop.”
The Generals faced some tough competition en route to winning the Alberta title, in particular the Innisfail Eagles whom they ousted in four straight — but competitive — games. Now they’ll be taking on championship teams from across Canada.
“It’s just a matter of being prepared and realizing how important that first game is,” said Tobler. “We know it’s not going to be easy and we have to be as ready as we possibly can be.”
The Generals will face the other club — the Lameque Au P’tit Mousse of New Brunswick — in their three-team pool Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. MDT. The other pool consists of the defending champion Dundas Real McCoys, Grand Falls-Windsor, Nlfd., Cataracts and the Southeast Prairie Thunder of Manitoba.
The quarter-finals, featuring the third-place teams facing the second-place teams in a pool crossover — with the first-place clubs getting a bye — will be played Thursday and will be followed by Friday’s semifinals and the championship contest at 2 p.m. MDT Saturday (TSN at 4 p.m., two-hour delay).