[coldraptors]

Quotes from Duane Sutter and Jim Playfair about the upcoming season!

Duane Sutter :

A lot of the style of how we play is at the hands of the head coach. The Calgary Flames have had a style over the past number of seasons of hard-nosed, in your face hockey, combined with a solid level of skill, size and speed. It’s going to be an exciting year for this franchise. We are really looking forward to it.

Well, it’s a complete cycle through any professional hockey player’s career, from the day that you are drafted to a National Hockey League team right through to the end of your career. In the American Hockey League, outside of the NHL, this is the best league to develop your skills in the world. Every player has a different path, a different approach on getting to that level of excellence. There are players that due to these circumstances may not make it to the NHL until 27-28 years old. There will be players on the HEAT this year that will range potentially in age from 19-20 years old right thru to 28-29 years of age. We have one kind of ‘dinosaur’ that will be a fan favourite, but that is the direction as far as age goes. The older player will be Peter Vandermeer, who is a great character player who sets a great example for the younger players and goes to war every night. Peter is under an American League contract and it is pretty safe to say he will be here and be a leader in our community as well.

Jim Playfair :

I think the most important thing we have to do with the organization is continue on the path that the community and ownership group have established here and that is that the identity of the hockey team has to be that of consistent hard work, of smart work and be day to day focussed on our goals. I think the ultimate responsibility for me as a coach is to prepare this team to have a chance to make the playoffs and to bring a Calder Cup Championship to the City of Abbotsford. To do that, it’s a day to day process that starts with now by making sure that our players are training right in the summertime, and making sure that they are mentally and physically ready to go in September when they get to the community and then combining the responsibility of being good citizens in the community and being good players on the ice, and then collectively being something we can be proud of on the ice each and every night. The last thing is to make our building the hardest building to play in throughout the American Hockey League.

I think the biggest thing to remember here is that there are 700 players in the NHL holding down jobs in the best hockey league in the world. The American Hockey League has the next best 700 players in the world who are all preparing to push those 700 NHL guys out of work and to fill those National League spots. What you are going to see here in Abbotsford is an unbelievable level of potential that we will have the challenge to develop. This really starts in our development camps, getting the players to understand the level of commitment we want, the proper nutrition, the off-ice habits, the on-ice habits, and it’s a real process to bring it along so that when they bring it together collectively as a team in the dressing room, they are all starting to think the same way. Then once they all think the same way, they can play the same way. Then the joy of it…the excitement of it is when they work together, is for one of them to go to the NHL and never come back. That’s when you know you’ve done a good job as a community…as a team, as a coaching staff and as a group of players. You are not going to move 4 or 5 up as a time, but it’s a responsibility to move one or two up a year who can end up being top players in the National Hockey League. There is a collective reason why they do it together and that is to get to the National Hockey League.