Sackville Blazers look to home to fill spots on team

SACKVILLE
By Philip Croucher - The Weekly News
The Sackville Blazers have brought a local flavour to the ice this season.
The Nova Scotia Junior Hockey League team has 13 players on its roster from Sackville - a record for the club - as it makes a concerted effort to get more hometown players in the lineup.
"It was done in order to help us survive and make it easier at the gate," said Dwight Dempster, the club's head coach and director of hockey operations. "There are decent players there too, so it makes it easier."
In fact, two of Dempster's four forward lines are made up exclusively of recent graduates from either the Millwood Knights or Sackville Kingfishers high school hockey teams. There is the all-Millwood line of Nicholas Rose, Kyle Peveril and Jeremy Thomas, and the all-Kingfisher trio of Jay Titchmarsh, Chris Simms and Jesse Forrest.
"There are plenty of high school players available for us," said Dempster, who has been with the Blazers for about 15 years. "It's not like we turned people away, it's just we went after the Sackville players."
For most junior B teams like Sackville, each season is a struggle to make ends meet financially. The Blazers are averaging about 250 fans a game and rely heavily on fundraising to pay the bills.
"We're only going to spend what we have," Dempster said. "I think we're OK. I can't say we're in fantastic shape, but we'll survive."
While assured of a playoff spot, the Blazers are in a dog-fight for positioning with five other teams. The top-eight teams in the nine club league make it to the post-season, which begins later this month. Sackville (15-12-2) went into this week's action tied for fifth overall with the Strait Pirates, but were just a point back of the fourth-place St. Margaret's Bay Ducks.
Teams will get ranked in order from one to eight according to points at the end of the regular season to determine the first-round playoff match-ups.
"I think they're starting to come together now - starting to play at the level we hoped they would," Dempster said of his club which has just seven returnees. "We have a look of a team that can run deep in the playoffs. We have four good lines and that will make it difficult on teams to put us out."
The Blazers have three games left before playoffs, including a home match-up on Monday, Feb. 9 against the Brookfield Elks at
7:30 p.m.
pbcroucher@hotmail.com