Welcome to the latest edition of The Ice Wolves Den. This week we have a brief recap of this past weekend Exhibition Series and a preview of the upcoming 2024-25 season.
This past weekend the NAHL Ice Wolves played a pair of exhibition games against the US National Team Development Program Under 17 squad. They split the series with a 5-2 victory on Friday and dropped a thriller on Saturday, 3-2 in overtime. The series was also the home debut of new Head Coach Kevin Hartzell. While the score didn’t matter, team owner Stan Hubbard says the atmosphere, attention from scouts and hospitality shown to our visitors were the highlights, “Forget how the games turned out, we had two wonderful hockey games here. To be honored by the US Program coming into our building and play means we’re doing a lot of things right. From the kids all the way up to our junior teams. We should be proud of what we’re all building here in New Mexico.” Stan continued, “They honored us by coming here, the way we treated the Women’s Olympic Team a couple years ago when they came here, this was another big one for the Ice Wolves. They participate in the Showcase, but I think this is the first time the NTDP has visited a NAHL building. I’d love to see them back here. We had scouts here this weekend, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Denver University. The NTDP coming in attracts these big schools, but they’re watching our boys too and I think they liked what they saw.”
As they move into the regular season, Assistant Coach Kyle McKenzie was pleased with their performance, “I thought the boys took a step this weekend. They played well Friday night, brought in some new players Saturday and they stepped up. There are a lot of positives to take out of this weekend, we still have a lot of work to do, things to clean up but all in all they looked good.” McKenzie continued, “I loved the physicality, we knew this team was going to be skilled, but not overly sized and knew we had to be physical with them and I thought we did that. We’re also very confident in our goaltending. Jackson Fuller, Brendan Holahan, Gavin Schahn, they all played very well this weekend and we’re confident in each one of them.”
New Head Coach Kevin Hartzell was also pleased with the goaltending, “Having three goaltenders like this is a great problem to have, our two 20 year olds, Fuller and Holohan are really good. Gavin just hasn’t gotten junior experience yet. I was really excited to get him into the game Saturday in the third period and overtime, I thought he performed well under pressure.” He continued, “They all performed well, our goal is wherever we’re at today won’t be good enough tomorrow. I’d love to carry all three goalies, but the problem is you can only dress 2. At this level you can’t really spread three around, it just doesn’t work, but I really like all three, there’s no doubt about it.”
When it comes to leadership, Coach Hartzell has his own unique way of choosing his captains, “We’re going to be rotating Captains throughout the year, there will be no permanent Captains. There will be a Captain and Assistant Captains for 6 weeks, then they are going to choose the next Captains, they’ll be acknowledging each other for their leadership, passing the honor on to the next person they think is deserving.” He said, “I’ve had great success with my teams, we had a leadership weekend, it was all about understanding what it looks like and recognizing what it looks like. They’ll be passing on the Cs and As on to the next person. We’ll probably name the first ones, but from now on they’ll be in charge of that.”
Tickets are on sale now for this weekend’s regular season opener against the Corpus Christi Ice Rays. The Ice Wolves are in action Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Saturday will be 70’s night, fans are encouraged to dress in 70’s attire. Puck drop Friday and Saturday is at 6:30, Sunday at 2pm.
Photographs courtesy of Scott Adamson
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