A New Brunswick team is representing our region at the national under-18 men’s hockey championship.
The Moncton Flyers won the Atlantic Championship in early April to advance to the TELUS Cup.
John DeCourcey, the team’s head coach, said they have been doing a lot of prep work since their victory.
“The first few days you’re kind of still in celebration mode after winning that, so then you get back to work after a few days,” DeCourcey said in an interview.
“We brought some of our alumni around that have been at the TELUS Cup before to talk to our players. We’ve done some scrimmaging and things because you can’t just practice for two weeks.”
DeCourcey said they have also pre-scouted the teams they will be playing since they do not know a lot about them. That includes reviewing video, learning more about their top players and getting to know how they play.
The Moncton Flyers are no strangers to playing national hockey, having won the 2022 TELUS Cup in Alberta against Cantonniers de Magog.
“The one thing we try to do is we’re just going to focus on one day at a time, one game at a time. If you start to think about the whole tournament and all the teams and all the players, it becomes a little overwhelming,” said the head coach.
“We always go into these events I think as a bit of the underdog coming from the least populated part of the country, so we’ll try to use that to our advantage.”
The Flyers will open preliminary round action at 3 p.m. Monday as they take on the Elgin Middlesex Canucks. Also taking part are the Regina Pat Canadians, the Okanagan Rockets, the Chevaliers de Lévis and the host Fraser Valley Thunderbirds.
The semifinals are on Saturday followed by the bronze and gold medal games on Sunday.
