Lightning ready for puck drop on new season

By Lethbridge Herald on October 14, 2022.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge Lightning Senior AA hockey club drop the puck on a new season tonight with plenty of motivation.

“Finishing last year, we had a bit of a disappointment loss there  at the end to get the championship, but that’s the way it goes,” said Shay Wirll, Lightning head coach.

“We had quite a few new faces come in this year which was encouraging to see. I love the … players that are finishing junior and are open to coming and playing with us. It means that we’re creating a good environment and there’s good word of mouth about the organization.”

The Lightning were  happy about  a competitive training camp.

“They make it pretty tough on me to make some decisions because there’s a lot of great players and we can only keep 28 of them,” said Wirll.

“I’m very excited to see what that brings not only for the team but for the league which is fantastic. We’ve been working a long, long time to make it a better league.”

The Lightning lost in overtime on home ice to the Nanton Palominos in the league championship in 2022 and it brings “intense motivation” as Wirll described to himself and the team.

“We feel like we got a bit robbed,” he said.

“Obviously, only one team can win and Nanton is heck of a great team, they have a great organization and a tradition of winning: we’re pretty young in it. We don’t expect it to come easy but like I said, you know you cut that close, you get just a taste of it and then it gets ripped out. So it builds a little bit of a fire in your belly and some desire in your heart to want to get it.”

The Lightning will return 21 skaters from last season and have seven new additions.

“We want to win a championship — playoffs, then provincials— and we always like to be top of the league coming out into playoffs,” he said.

Wirll expects the team to be very competitive right off the hop.

“We have a lot of veteran guys that are going to help mold some of these young players that came in from junior,” he said.

“But like I said, if there’s growing pains, there will be growing pains. We strive for perfect, that’s not always attainable, so we work alongside the failures that we meet and try to overcome them.”

Puck drop on the home opener  goes tonight at 7:30 p.m. between the Lightning and the Palominos at Nicholas Sheran Arena.

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