THUNDER BAY -- Bill McDonald wants to forget last season.
And why would he not?
His Lakehead Thunderwolves dropped their first 11 games of the season and had just two victories by the tim the Christmas break rolled around. When all was said and done, they finished with an 8-16-4 mark and were on the outside looking in when the OUA postseason arrived.
Missing the playoffs was a first since Thunderwolves rejoined the university hockey ranks in 2001, a feat the fourth-year coach hopes to erase with a triumphant return in 2016-17.
It’ll start in the back end, where the team was the third-worst in the league last season, only Concordia and RMC allowing more goals per game.
American Dillon Donnelly, a former Colorado Avalanche draft pick, and Patrick Murphy, who scored 13 goals last season with the OHL’s Sudbury Wolves, are McDonald’s prize recruits. Both are expected to meld into a blue-line that returns the likes of Justin Sefton, Jake Ringuette, Linden Springer, Tyler Anton and Matt Alexander.
The duo will be asked to fill holes left by the departures of former captain Luke Maw and rugged defenceman Jay Gilbert.
“I think we’ve got a pretty solid D,” McDonald said.
“And we were quite happy with (goalie) Devin Green last year. So if we do have a strong suit, it’s probably our back end.”
Green, 7-7-3 in his rookie year with a 3.61 goals against average, said this year’s defensive corps comes with a different skill set. That will help at both ends of the ice, he said.
“The d-men we have can move the puck well, not just defensively, but they can jump up in the offensive play. I think it’s going to help overall in the offensive zone and the d-zone.”
Sefton, a one-time draft pick of the San Jose Sharks, agreed, though admitted it will take both forwards and defencemen alike some time to get used to the new style.
“It’s more of a run-and-gun than a stand-back-and-watch like last year,” Sefton said. “But once we get the exhibition games started it’ll be a lot easier to not think about other stuff. And with this new (dressing) room, it’s kind of easy to erase everything at this point.”
Claw marks: Forward Kelin Ainsworth has had a change of heart and is back for a fifth and final season with the Thunderwolves … McDonald said forward Cody Alcock, who suffered a season-ending knee injury last January, is back practicing with the team and could be ready for the start of regular-season play.
