As the NHL finishes its current season, the Kings Mutual Valley Wildcats and the Valley CIBC Wood Gundy Wildcats are well on their way to the next season.

Both teams held their Spring I.D. camps last month at the Acadia Arena with a single session on May 16 and the two final sessions on the 21 and 22. The bantams had 43 players show up for their camp and the midgets had 58. The midget number was larger than expected because a number of players from Sackville and Halifax came to Wolfville for the tryouts.

The extra players made coach Jeff O’Flaherty’s job a little more difficult, but there was an upside. “With guys coming from different places, the competition level was a little bit higher,” he said prior to the last session Friday evening. “There was more fire in their efforts.”

These efforts were evaluated by a six-member team who would compare notes and make decisions after each session before making their final choices following the Friday session. This I.D. camp is not intended to select the 2015-16 version of the Wildcats, but to determine which players will be invited to come to the actual tryouts in August.

Although O’Flaherty found himself evaluating a number of players he didn’t know, that was not the case with bantam coach Travis Young, despite the fact Young is a first year bantam coach.
            Young is taking over from Dan Turner who spent four of the last five years with the bantams and a year as the midgets’ head coach. Turner is leaving to be able to spend more time with a family that will increase prior to the beginning of next season as well as having more time to devote to his business.

Young has worked with most of the players in various sessions this spring, so they are not unfamiliar to him. Although he has a group of four evaluating the players, he has not yet selected his assistant coaches for the season, and in that respect, he is in the same boat as O’Flaherty, who is not yet sure who will join him behind the bench.

Although Young can learn a great deal about players from watching them in the drills, he learns more about them when he watches them play a game as he can tell “if they think the game.” In these sessions he got a sense of what type of team he may have as well as their skill level. Prior to the final on-ice session, he said that he was, “definitely pleased so far,” and that “everything is as we hoped it would be.”

Both Young and O’Flaherty were assisted in their selection efforts by Elliott Richardson, who guided the players through dry-land training during the camp. Off-ice training is an important aspect of each I.D. camp and the teams do regular dry-land training throughout the season.

Of course it is early, but there were positive Wildcats’ vibes at the Acadia Arena last month.