It’s been a bumpy start for the Castlegar Rebels this year, with two losses, a tie and one win during pre-season play.
The Rebels began the pre-season with an exhibition game against the Nelson Leafs on Aug. 30, which the Rebels lost 10-2, but then they picked up a 5-3 win against the Beaver Valley Nitehawks on Sept. 1. They faced the Nitehawks again on Saturday, tying them 4-4, and went up against the Leafs again on Sunday for another loss, 6-3. Despite the mixed results, new head coach and general manager Bill Rotheisler was happy with the pre-season, but says there are still changes ahead for the Rebels.
“I was happy with our games,” he said. “Exhibition is tough because you’ve got some different coaching philosophies on whether you want to have your whole roster in or not and we used it as getting a lot of guys who haven’t had some ice, some ice time, and a lot of guys looking at the bubble that at the end of the day, they probably aren’t going to make it. Plus I had a lot of guys away, so I was actually really happy with what we were able to accomplish in the pre-season with figuring out who can sink or swim.”
Rotheisler still has some tinkering to do with the roster, but says that fans can probably expect to see forwards Logan Styler, John Moeller and Ian McKay on the starting lineup with new captain Daniel Petten and Ian Wentworth on defence. As to which of the team’s goalies will start in net, that still remains to be seen.
“We really like both of our guys,” says Rotheisler. “Both our guys had a really strong pre-season, so we kind of have an idea who we want to start the season off for us, but either way there’ll be one goalie playing one game this weekend, one playing the other.”
The Rebels’ first regular season games will be against the Golden Rockets in Golden on Friday, Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m. Visit castlegarrebels.com for a full schedule.