The Canmore Eagles will be holding their annual “Spring Camp” on the April 10-12 weekend at the Canmore Recreation Centre.
Exhibition games will be held on Friday, April 10 (2 pm – 9 pm), Saturday, April 11 (8:30 am – 9:30 pm) and Sunday, April 12 (9 am – 4 pm). Parents and fans are welcome to attend all games and admission is free.
The Eagles will have some significant holes to fill on their roster for the upcoming 2015-16 season as the club will lose six 20-year-old players (1994’s) due to graduation including forwards Simon Philp, Joe Serpico, Jordan Revie and Reid Wilson and defenceman Jeremy Gordon and Nikolas Kosman.
The team will also lose at least another three 1995 born players from last year’s roster as the club currently has nine 1995 born players but can only keep a maximum of six 1995 born players for next season.
The list of 1995 born players include goaltender Ryan Ferguson, defenceman Jakob Lavoie, Brett Schimmel, Deryk Sutherland and Mackenzie Watson and forwards Connor Wilson, Lane Olson, Brett Radford and Kurt Hildebrand.
“No question, we will be using this year’s spring camp to help us find some younger players who can step into our lineup and help us right away,” said Eagle’s Head Coach and General Manager Andrew Milne. “Although we have a strong group of returning veterans for next season, we’ll probably need to replace at least nine players from last year’s lineup, so players coming to this spring camp will have every opportunity to earn a spot in our roster for next season.
“We finished with a record of 27-31-2 in 2014-15 and got swept 3-0 in the playoffs, so we certainly didn’t meet our expectations,” said Milne. “We need to be better in every position and hopefully we’ll find some players at this year’s spring camp who can challenge for a spot.”