The new season opens this weekend for the Quad City Storm. The team will play at Peoria Saturday night, then play their first home games next weekend.
Also starting his second season with the Storm is Head Coach Dave Pszenyczny who says 13 of his 19 players return from last year.
"If I clean house and bring in new guys, I'm starting over from scratch again and I didn't want to have to do that. I wanted to build around what we had at the end of last season, and then bring in the improvements where we were lacking last season."
Three other players come from other teams in the Southern Professional Hockey League, and two are rookies who played for college teams last year.
Coach "P" played for 11 seaons, and 5 leagues, including the Peoria Rivermen where he was captain and the league's Defenseman of the Year in 2017-2018. And he says it's been an adjustment, going from player to head coach.
"You think that it's so easy to transition over because you've been in so many practices but then when you get behind the bench, it's a different thing - you kind of get like a writer's block where you can't remember certain things. So then you start watching more NHL hockey, and just hockey in general, and I think that's what improved me this past summer."
The new season for the Storm will include 28 home games and 27 games on the road, with most played on weekends, and it continues through early April.
