Things couldn't have gone much better to open 2005 for the Cannons.
After fighting their way to a 2-1 victory over the Army Ants, the Cannons came back to dominate their next two games, beating the Prowlers and Hornets each by a 7-3 margin.
"It's a good opening step for our club," commented coach Darryl Sutter. "But it's only three games and it's only the preseason."
Yet indications still look very strong. Mike Dunham's play has taken a complete turn from last year as the vetrean goalie has allowed only 7 goals in 3 preseason games and holds a save percentage of .921.
Other Cannons performing well include star center Chris Drury. Drury had the hat trick and 5 points in the win against the Prowlers and shares the league lead in points with 9. But even better news than Drury's high point totals are the numbers for the secondary lines. The second, third, and fourth lines have combined to score 50% of the Cannons goals, a tremendous increase from last season.
And that's all without Nikoali Zherdev, who was injured just 7 minutes into the preseason.
"About Zherdev, he's doing fine," Sutter remarked. "We're going to hold him out awhile, err on the side of caution. If this were the regular season he'd be playing, but we want to take it easy with him in the preseason."
Longtime Cannon Eric Weinrich put the quick start into the proper perspective:
"It's awfully nice after some of the struggles we've had these past few years," Weinrich said. "I mean, three Cannons on the preseason scoring leaderboard is great and all. But that's not our goal. Our goal is to see 25 Cannons on that Cup at the end of the year."
Cannons come out firing, dominating early pre-season
There is a new gm in town and he has begun the housecleaning in Boston of the DWSHL. In the 1st deal of his new posting, Bandits gm, Emile Lakatos swung a 9 player deal with the Houston Hornets. Boston sent Ron Francis, Jan Hrdina and Pavel Kubina to Houston for Jeff Jillson, Stanislav Chistov, Rick DiPietro, Jaroslav Spacek, Dmitri Afanasenkov, and KevinEstrada.
In another deal just announced a few minutes ago, the Bandits sent packing Sergei Berezin and Steve Passmore to San Diego.In return the Wolves sent packing Eric Boguniecki and Johan Hedberg to Boston.
The league was searching for an experienced gm. Lakatos has been involved with FHL for the last 2 years. He has run his own league(won the championship 1st year, lost in finals in 2nd year and lost in semi-fianls in 3rd year) , he has also been in various other leagues that start up numeruous times and disappear just as fast...He is currently involved in the WCFHL, SCHL and FCL.
We asked him on what the fans in Boston can expect from the team this season?.."The fans can expect a competitive team that has lots of youth and speed. But the fans shouldnt expect miracles in the 1st season under my leadership. At the moment, Rod Brindamour remains a Bandit, but for how long, I am not sure as we are in talks with 1 team who is interested in him. I think that we have improved the team quite a bit especially at the goaltending position and we have also cut our payroll to ree us up to sing upcoming free agents in the next couple years.! "
The team currently as it is will look like this
Center........Turgeon/Brindamour/Chistov/Larsen
LW............Estrada/Afanasenkov/Cowan/Lindsay
RW...........Boguniecki/Reisen/Nichol/Bernier
D..............Berard/Lynch/Spacek/Jillson/Horacek/Mottau
G..............Hedberg/DiPietro
New Boston GM makes impact felt almost immediately.
Today's edition includes a recap of the Cannons' early pre-season action as well as a review of the big Hornets/Bandits deal from new GM Emile Lakatos.
Vol V, Ed. 3
2/15/04
