When Brandon Hagel spoke to Troy Gillard of RDNewsNow.ca earlier this week, he sounded like he was prepared to take this season and push, pull and drag the Rebels through what many expected to be a tougher season.
Tonight he showed the faithful Rebels fans that he means what he says by putting Team White on his back
, scoring four goals and adding a couple of assists. Team White would go on to defeat Team Black by a score of 8-3.
“Like I said it starts from day one, I just gotta keep moving forward.” Hagel said after the game.
When asked about what it was like playing with the youngsters, Hagel smiled and added, “Yeah the future’s bright, the fans have a lot to look forward to. I think you could see that after tonight. You’ve got a lot of good players coming up, I’m even excited even though I am moving on next year.”
One of his linemates throughout camp has been Import Draft pick Oleg Zaitsev (01), and Hagel spoke about what it’s like playing with him. “He’s a tremendous player, it’s gonna be incredible playing with him this year. I mean I get the look of that. Like I said he sees the ice very well, he works on both ends of the ice, he’s just an all around good hockey player.”
Another player on Team White that had an excellent game was 2002-born forward Ethan Rowland. He scored a couple of very nice goals and put himself into a position to get into some pre-season action.
“Feels good just to be back here, be around everyone and get my feet going the way I like to.” said Rowland following his team’s victory.
“I feel like hopefully I am in the conversation, just trying to break the roster and doing whatever it takes to do that, Rowland said when asked how he’s feeling about his training camp and if he thinks he’s done enough to make the team that GM and Head Coach Brent Sutter names for the 2018-19 regular season.
“I gained some weight and some muscle and then improved my cardio.” added Rowland when it was noted he is in good shape and looked like he had filled out.
Brent Sutter added “obviously he is an elite player at 16. He certainly has been pushing the play of our hockey team and now he will get opportunities as we go through exhibition to see if he is ready or not.”
“We’ve reassigned a lot of players tonight and get down to some little bit more manageable numbers, but everyone that’s leaving after this game we’ve been very happy with and there has been zero disappointment from our end of it with everyone.” Brent added when asked about cut downs.
Here are the goal scorers from tonight’s Black vs. White game:
Team White: Rowland, Hagel, Hagel, Hagel, Hagel, Rowland, Zaitsev, Fahey
Team Black: Morozoff, Sydlowski, Tarzwell
After the game the Rebels made nine roster moves to reduce the roster to 34 players including goalies:
Forwards – Nick de Beurs (02) (Cochrane, AB), Jayden McCarthy (01) (Morris, MB), Josh Medernach (03)(Lloydminster, AB), Keaton Sorensen (02) (Red Deer, AB), and Jaxsen Wiebe (02) (Moose Jaw, SK)
Defencemen – Skyler Cameron (02) (Nanaimo, BC), Blake Gustafson (02) (Ardrossan, AB), Garret Valk (02) (North Vancouver, BC), and Mason Ward (02) (Lloydminster, AB).
Following below are the players that are leaving to their respective NHL rookie or training camps. Brandon Hagel is off on September 5th, it is unknown when the other players are headed out of town.
Jacob Herauf – Pittsburgh Penguins
Alexander Alexeyev – Washington Capitals
Brandon Hagel – Montreal Canadiens
Dawson Barteaux – Dallas Stars
Reese Johnson – New York Rangers
