Heading into the season opener last week, Quad City Storm players and coaches liked the vibe in the dressing room.
The thought was that head coach and director of hockey operations Dave Pszenyczny was compiling a roster that could battle for the SPHL title.
A sweep of defending champion Peoria was a great start to the season and just a glimpse of what the Storm may be building this season, but the coach wasn’t about to take more out of the opening-weekend success than the four points his team won.
“I’m probably going to sound like a broken record, but I mentioned before that we’re not going to win a championship in Game 1 or definitely not in Game 2,” Pszneyczny said. “But it’s nice to see what we need to work on and can build on.”
The coach had a pretty good idea of what he had going into last weekend with a veteran crew on the ice that featured a number of returning players from last year’s club that lost to Peoria in the playoff semifinals.
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“I think we have pretty much a head start on most teams in our league at this point,” the coach said. “I say that, but you still have to be consistent day in and day out.”
Still, there is reason for optimism and some of those players even saw that heading into the season.
“We have a really hard-working, gritty team with some guys with a lot of skill,” said centerman Tommy Tsicos, who is in his fourth year with the Storm and coming off a season in which he scored a career-high 14 goals and 38 points. “All of our skill guys have an edge to them, which is how you have success in the playoffs.
"We have a lot of guys returning from last year and a few guys from two years ago, so we have built a pretty good culture here where we emphasize hard work and that creates a gritty style of play that fans like to come out and see.”
That gritty style of play resulted in 18 penalty minutes in Saturday’s 2-1 victory in Peoria when the Storm allowed 44 shots on netminder Bailey Brkin.
Pszneyczny wasn’t overly concerned with those numbers in a game he said didn’t have much flow to it.
The coach said that he didn’t have to make many adjustments this week in practice as a result of what he saw last weekend. It was just a usual week in preparing for the team’s first three-game weekend that begins Friday evening at Vermilion County.
“We’re just focusing moreso on ourselves and not the opposition,” he said.
That is another byproduct of having familiarity in the room.
“We look great on paper, but now we have to execute,” right winger and captain Taylor Pryce said. “… We can’t get distracted from long-term goals. We have a 55/56-game season that we need to be building every day.”
And Pszneyczny is focusing on doing just that with a talented roster that is loaded with offensive weapons, big defenders and quality goaltending.
The goaltending will get a test this weekend with Baily Brkin having been called up to the IHL Iowa Heartlanders. Kevin Resop and Ryan Edquist will get looks this weekend, something the coach said was going to happen anyway to get them some game time.
Those call-ups are part of the game — at least for Quad City. The Storm roster was a revolving door last season with players getting ECHL time and Pszneyczny having to scramble to field a full roster.
So far this season, QC has added some familiar pieces back to the defensive side with Carter Shinkaruk back from the ECHL and Alex Carlson being added.
But the organization’s willingness to give guys the opportunity to test the ECHL ice is also one of the things that makes this an attractive place to play, said Pryce.
“We have a few veterans that want to be here for the whole year and that kind of creates a core group that keeps those values and that rubs off on guys really easily,” he said. “I know negatives can rub off on people the same way, so we try to keep it positive every day.
“We absolutely have the pieces to make a run, I don’t think there’s any question about that. I know for a fact that it’s the nature of the beast that we will deal with call-ups, but unlike years in the past, it feels like every guy is a core guy and we can lose a couple of pieces and keep a strong product on the ice.”
QC did that last week and Pszneycsny plans on that being the case again this weekend.
