The Red Deer Rebels’ slate of extra defenceman will likely take a hit in the not-too-distant future.
“We’ve got a decision to make on the back end,” general manager/head coach Jesse Wallin said Friday at the Collicutt Centre, where the team worked out in preparation for tonight’s 7:30 p.m. Western Hockey League meeting with the visiting Regina Pats.
“We’ll get down to eight (defencemen). Ideally, we’d like to get down to 24 players overall.”
The Rebels have sat rearguards Lucas Grayson, Stephen Hak and Cody Thiel for the large majority of the still young Western Hockey League season. Each of them has appeared in one game.
“It’s been tough to get any of them in,” said Wallin. “Our top four are our top four and Kayle (rookie Doetzel) has played real well. I would love to get Hak in there. He and Thiel have played well when they’ve had the chance and deserve the opportunity to play more.
“The tough part right now is we haven’t played a lot of games. We’ve had kind of a college schedule where you play a couple of games then have a week off. So we just haven’t had a lot of demands, it hasn’t created a situation where we’ve really needed to change our lineup much. I expect over that over the next month when our schedule starts to heat up a bit, that we’ll be able to rotate some guys in and out.”
And yet, one of Hak, Thiel and Grayson will either be reassigned or traded over the next week or two. Based on Wallin’s comments, Grayson might be the odd man out.
Wallin didn’t rule out using one of the three tonight.
“We’ll see. We haven’t decided on our lineup yet,” he said. “Obviously we’d like to get everyone in when we can, but we also want to go with our best lineup. There will come a time when guys wear down a bit due to the schedule — although we’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had an injuries yet, outside of Brooks Maxwell (upper body, three to four weeks) — and we’ll have to juggle our roster as a result.”
Tonight’s game is the third of six consecutive home outings for the Rebels, who will host the Kamloops Blazers, Moose Jaw Warriors and Portland Winterhawks on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of next week.
• Forward Scott Feser, who was reassigned to the midget AAA ranks following the Rebels preseason schedule, currently leads the Red Deer Optimist Rebels in scoring with two goals and five points in three games.
gmeachem@www.reddeeradvocate.com
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