By François Biber

Blades regroup in wake of early playoff exit

Apr 17, 2013 | 11:59 AM

Five weeks before the MasterCard Memorial Cup rolls into the City of Bridges, the Saskatoon Blades are hitting the ice in hopes of erasing the memory of a four-game sweep at the hands of the Medicine Hat Tigers last month.

“That’s behind us. That’s over and we know we have a good group of guys in here and we’re going to go out there and show the Memorial Cup that we can play,” said Blades captain Brendan Walker.

In 2010 Walker and Blades forward Michael Ferland were members of the Brandon Wheat Kings when they hosted the Memorial Cup. After being ousted in conference finals that year, Walker and Ferland had a layover before Brandon hosted the national championship. Walker said his experience then is helping his Saskatoon team today.

“This is nothing. It goes by so fast that we won’t even know what hit us when it comes time for the Memorial Cup,” said Walker.

“I don’t think this (layover) is going to be a huge problem but we just have to make sure we’re ready to go. We have lots of stuff to work on and lots of stuff to look forward to so we just need to make sure we’re focused and working hard every day.”

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If they weren’t ready to work hard coming back to Credit Union Centre, head coach and general manager Lorne Molleken set the tone early as the team has been focusing on conditioning, which means a lot of skating for the players.

“We have a plan in place and that entails conditioning, so as we move forward we expect our conditioning to get to a point where we can really push ourselves,” said Molleken after practice on Tuesday.

“Once we arrive in May we’ll have some scrimmage games and really key in on our special teams situations.”

The Blades have been missing a key part of their powerplay with an injury to forward Erik Benoit. Benoit suffered an injury to his left MCL in a Mar.15 matchup against provincial rivals Prince Albert. Molleken said he isn’t rushing Benoit’s recovery, but expects him to be back in full-practice mode in the next couple of weeks.

For Molleken, he said the biggest thing is commitment, adding that’s exactly what he’s been seeing from his team over the last 48 hours.

Molleken said over the next five weeks the Blades have a lot to work on, but they won’t be reinventing themselves.

“Biggest thing is, we’re going to play the same way, we don’t want to get into a situation where we’re having to change a lot of different things. We want to play to our strengths and implement a real strong game plan that we feel will counter what the opposition is doing,” said Molleken.

The Blades open the MasterCard Memorial Cup on May 17 against the winner of the OHL championship.

fbiber@rawlco.com

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