Benny Walchuk:
Coach, a couple of big wins for your team this past week. You picked up a divisional win on the road against Weyburn on Wednesday, followed by a big home-ice victory over the Battlefords North Stars on Saturday. I'm sure you're pretty happy with those efforts.
Emery Olauson:
Yeah, for sure. This time of year, and looking ahead to next year's schedule, I'll probably try to get a few more home games, especially with a young team. It's tough to win on the road in this league, and that's not an excuse. We definitely want to be better away from home, but we've only played four home games so far and taken care of business in all four.
We want to keep that going, but we're still looking for more consistency on the road. I really liked our effort in Weyburn this past week.
Benny Walchuk:
One area that's been encouraging is the depth scoring. With the offensive losses you had coming into the season, you knew you'd need contributions throughout the lineup, and it looks like that's starting to come together.
Emery Olauson:
Yeah, for sure. I'd have to double-check the numbers, but I believe we had six different goal scorers in Weyburn and seven against Battlefords at home.
From the start, we knew that with all the players we lost from last year's roster, we'd have to score by committee. We were getting contributions early from returning players like Briltz and Chewy, who had been depth players last season and were taking advantage of their opportunities.
Now it feels like everyone is starting to get going. Even our so-called fourth line features rookie centreman Evan Hymovitch, who's producing at a point-per-game pace. You add Biakabutuka to that line, and suddenly Kale Johns gets hot as well.
That takes a lot of pressure off the other players. We also felt it was only a matter of time before the line of Vallance, Godley and Brass started clicking. The underlying numbers showed they were playing pretty dominant hockey; they just weren't getting the bounces.
Against Battlefords, Godley had a three-point night, while Vallance and Brass each picked up two points. Now it feels like things are coming together, and I guess patience has paid off.
Benny Walchuk:
We talked earlier in the season about special teams and the need to get the power play going while getting the penalty kill back on track. Over the last week or so, the power play in particular seems to have found its groove. Is that how you see it?
Emery Olauson:
Yeah, for sure. We've been looking closely at both the power play and penalty kill, and they've definitely been giving us some grey hairs.
Over the last couple of weeks, it dawned on me just how much turnover we had among our special-teams players. Usually, your returning players carry a lot of that responsibility, but we lost a lot of guys from our top six, including Zawatski, Junek, Henrikson, Courchesne, Leonard and Bartha. Those were all players who contributed on the power play last season.
We didn't have much continuity, so it was almost like starting from scratch with each unit.
Now we're getting contributions from players like Mathys Morrissette on the power play and rookie Elie Robert. Chewy has scored shorthanded, and Medernach has been great, even though he wasn't with us last season.
Rieser is really the only player who carried over from last year's power play, but he's got four new weapons in front of him. We've also been experimenting with Madore and Buckley, trying to find the right combinations.
It feels like we've finally turned a corner and figured out which players work well together and who we can rely on in those important situations, both on the power play and penalty kill.
Benny Walchuk:
Finally, a quick look ahead to this weekend. You've got a home-and-home series with Estevan, a team that got off to a slower start but picked up a couple of big home-ice wins last weekend.
Emery Olauson:
It's still early in the season, and even in our first game against them, you could look up and down their lineup and see the danger they pose. You can't take them lightly.
Melfort and Humboldt both found that out against a team that had just one win before last week. We want to make sure we're prepared and approach these games like a best-on-best matchup.
On paper, I think Estevan has one of the better lineups in the league. They've got a lot of new faces, but it was only a matter of time before they started figuring things out.
I like their defence, they have good goaltending, and there's plenty of danger among their top nine forwards. They're a dangerous opponent right now, and they're probably feeling a lot better about themselves after those wins.
