Friday, November 27th, was the last time the whole Jr. Klippers roster was on the ice together.

The team was off to a good start this season over 3 games, before Klippers Head Coach and GM Ken Plaquin made the decision to send his guys home,

“As much as they love being on the ice, it does get a little tedious.” explained Plaquin, “It’s nice to take breaks, and it was great for the kids to have a longer Christmas break. That doesn’t happen too often when you play hockey. There were some positives”

Coach did manage to get home for a little bit over the holidays as well, but mostly stayed in Kindersley over the pause. Since early January, Plaquin has spent some time volunteering at a local hockey academy, but starting this week his players started to come back.

Some seven skaters are back in town with more coming, and one goalie in Brett Sweet. Plaquin must be creative with how he divides up his practice times, but he is excited to finally have some of his players back.

Plaquin and his staff can focus on developing some of their younger talent as they return to the ice, but nothing is still known on whether or not the SJHL will be returning to play.

“I’ve said the word ‘hopefully’ 50,000 times this season I think.” said Plaquin.

Many steps will need to take place to get back on the ice for competitive action, but Plaquin says the first step is just getting everyone back together again as a team. From there expectations should not be too high, as coach says even just being able to allow everyone on the ice at the same time would be great decision. A request has been made by most Western Canadian leagues for this step.

“Then we are still waiting to see what the decisions will be in the near future, on if we will be able to play at the end of March or beginning of April and have kind of a mini season. That is what I hope will happen, but we will have to keep waiting to see.”

Plaquin also spoke on how nice it has been to have a collection of local talent on this year’s roster. Logan Linklater is one of the U18 players that has joined his Klippers teammates on the West Central Events Centre ice, and ‘03 born Kerrobert native and defenseman Micheal Neumeier is expected to join the team soon as well.