Loons have started off the 23/24 CCHL season on fire. After 18 games the Loons are sitting on top of the CCHL with 29 points. We expected to compete and be good but this is beyond our expectations. We have a few young guys playing big roles and did not know if they were going to be ready yet. Luckily our stars are performing well and have some lesser level guys stepping up.
Coming off of a couple of injury plagued seasons, Jack Eichel looks to be back to being a superstar. He is currently second in the CCHL in assists with 19 and 4th in points with 25. What is great to see in Jack's game is the 50% face off percentage and the +9. We added Dubois in the off season due to concerns about face offs but Jack has been up to the challenge and is cemented himself as our first line center.
Nick Schmaltz is definitely the beneficiary of Eichel's 19 assists. Nick is currently 2nd in the league in goals with 13 and 7th in points with 22. Without a doubt , Schmaltzy is a huge reason for the Loons early success. We knew we had 3 solid players on the right side but spent the off season searching for a true first line right winger, but fell short. Just last week when Pasta became available we had to fight our every urge to gut our roster and finally make Pasta a Loon. But we are hoping that sometimes the best moves are the ones you don't make.
As much as we love seeing our forwards putting up points and bragging about it, the true reason for our early success is definitely our defense. Having 5 absolute studs back there is letting our goaltenders shine and having multiple guys back there that can transition the puck out of our own zone is huge. Really excited to get Werenski back in the mix next year. Hopefully we can pump out some more of these blogs to help with that contract!
That's enough of us pumping our own tires and let's hope this doesn't jinx us and send us into a losing streak!
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