New Belleville Senators' Coach Discusses his Plans for the 2018-19 Season.
BELLEVILLE - Belleville Senators’ Head Coach Troy Mann joined David Foot and The Lorne Brooker Radio Show on CJBQ and addressed how he’s settling into a new environment in Belleville. The newly-appointed bench boss also discussed his goals for his team in the upcoming 2018-19 campaign.
Mann noted the offensive struggles of a year ago and wants to play an up-tempo style, giving the club the potential for a definite jump in the goals-for column. The Belleville Senators’ team struggled to find any kind of offensive consistency in their inaugural season, finishing at 27th in goals per game, averaging just 2.55 back of the 2.95 league average.
“If you look at the teams I coached in Hershey’’, said Mann,”we were certainly an aggressive team and were able to put the puck in the net. Certainly three of the four years I coached there, you look at the goals for, we were in the top ten the first three years. Obviously, last season was a struggle in many, many senses but you want to preach to the team to play with pace and play up-tempo…”
Mann arrives in the Friendly City with a winning track record. There is pressure to win as Ottawa’s AHL affiliates have finished outside the playoffs five of the last seven years.
The Campbellton, NB native added that while his first objective is still developing, he believes providing a winning environment and making the playoffs is the ultimate goal.
“The mindset going into training camp is let's work to try to get into the playoffs. Doesn’t matter if you finish first or fourth. Anything can happen in the playoffs, but you gotta get there first and I think that should be the mindset of our club from day one is let’s make the playoffs but at the same time, as an individual player and as a team focus in the week-to-week…”
Finally, Mann commented that the Senators’ organizational depth at the AHL level is giving him optimism for the new season. Call-ups and injuries never allowed for B-Sens to ice a consistent lineup last season, hindering both offensive and team performances.
“The one thing we needed to do was build depth, because as you know, once U.S. Thanksgiving rolls around, around the end of November, you start losing your players and if you don’t have depth to replace those players, it’s tough to win on a night to night basis, so I think that’s one thing we have been able to do a little bit more than in past seasons here and establish some depth, and there’s certainly going to be a number of forwards that are going to be available to us, and I still think we're still looking to maybe add on the back-end as well to create some depth there because, at the end of the day, you need players to step in and be able to play at the AHL level…”
Belleville Senators’ training camp is set to open on September 24th at the Quinte Sports and Wellness Centre.
You can listen to the full interview here.
