PHOTO – Ryley Risling has returned to the Canmore Eagles after a brief stint in the United States Hockey League – Photo courtesy of Julie Wilson.
UPCOMING GAMES
Canmore at Okotoks – Saturday, Jan 2 – 7 PM
Okotoks at Canmore – Sunday, Jan. 3 – 2 PM
Canmore Eagles Head Coach and General Manager Andrew Milne must have been a very good boy during the past year because Santa Claus certainly delivered a very nice present to him during the Christmas holidays.
After leaving the Eagles at the conclusion of the 2014-15 Alberta Junior Hockey League season to join the Waterloo Blackhawks of the United States Hockey League, power forward Ryley Risling has had a change of heart and has decided to terminate his allegiance to the USHL and has returned to Canmore to resume his junior hockey career with the Eagles.
Risling, who also inked an NCAA scholarship deal with the University of Vermont in the fall, led the Eagles in goals scored last year with 26 and finished third in team scoring with 46 points.
The 6’3, 210 lb forward is expected to be in the Canmore lineup when the Eagles visit the Okotoks Oilers on Saturday, Jan. 2 to open the 2016 portion of their 2015-16 AJHL schedule.
While playing for the Iowa-based Waterloo Blackhawks, Risling suffered a knee injury in mid-October and played just nine games registering one goal.
“It wasn’t what he thought it would be like there,” said an enthused Milne, whose club sports an 18-13-4 record at the X-mas break. “We are instantly going to be a better team with Ryley coming back and he could be a game changer for us. We’ve lost a lot of one-goal games this year and we know Ryley’s a 30-goal scorer, so he’s going to give us a chance to win every night.
“With his size and style of play, we also just got a lot more intimidating on the fore-check, we got a lot more physical, we got a lot more offensive and we’ve got a lot more fire power in the lineup.”
