Warriors’ coach O’Leary happy with what he’s seen from team in early stages of training camp

MOOSEJAWTODAY.COM -- While the Moose Jaw Warriors rookies were going through their paces to open the on-ice portion of training camp Wednesday, it also marked the first time the team’s veterans were able to do the same since the end of their storybook 2023-24 campaign.

Returnees were broken into main camp scrimmage teams and took the ice in two practices at the Moose Jaw Events Centre, working through the earliest of early season kinks while also picking up on a few new wrinkles in the Warriors’ system.

And while it’s still the opening stages of literally everything, head coach Mark O’Leary is already pleased with what he’s seen from his troops -- and that’s as positive sign as could be given their goal of defending their WHL championship.

“I’m really happy with the pace, our effort and compete was there, that’s where it has to start and I expect nothing different,” O’Leary said after Team 2 wrapped up their ice session Wednesday afternoon.

“We want to be stacking good days, that’s what we did last year. You don’t need to be playing your best hockey in September, but you want to make progress. That’s the goal right now, you stack a bunch of good days and they add up to a really good finish.”

The Warriors expect to have in the area of 16 returnees this season, meaning the first practices were loaded with veteran talent. With their winning pedigree, the goal is to regain and enhance the habits that became ingrained during their title-winning campaign and put them to good use immediately.’

“Habits are number one, we’ve made some tweaks to our systems that we’re working through right now and we use training camp for that,” O’Leary said. “But for the most part it’s habits, because habits beat systems all day long. Our effort and compete has to be there, and that’s all part of the boring things that add up to good days.”

One major factor coming into the season and a natural concern was complacency. Would the players who won the title last season come back hungry for even more when they’ve already accomplished so much?

The answer in the early going is ‘most definitely’.

“That was the message Wednesday after fitness testing,” O’Leary said. “It would be really easy to come in here maybe not being in the best shape, but I’m really proud of the guys who came back after the short summer… they put in the work to improve themselves and I haven’t seen any complacency at all.”

The Warriors will have a handful of players heading off to NHL training camps in the near future, meaning that a handful of youngsters will have a chance to step up and have an impact when they otherwise might not have.

Seizing that opportunity will be one of the things O’Leary will be looking for from the team’s up-and-coming talent, and ideally that carries over right into the regular season.

“We want to have a fast start to the season, we might not have our entire team with guys at NHL camps, but that’s fine,” O’Leary said. “We’ve lost a lot of good players, too, so it opens up some good spots for players who want that opportunity.”

Training camp continues throughout the weekend, with rookie camp wrapping up Friday and the full main camp scrimmages running all day Saturday followed by the Black White Intrasquad game at 12 p.m. on Sunday.