Saginaw soaring in the Western Conference

By Aaron Bell

Coming into this season, Saginaw Spirit GM/coach Todd Watson said that he wanted to raise the level of expectations with his team.

Six games into the year, it’s safe to say that he’s done just that.

The Spirit have won five of their first six games this year and find themselves at the top of the Western Conference standings two weeks into the season, and appear as the seventh ranked team in the BMO CHL MasterCard Top-10.

“At some point you’ve got to push everything to the middle of the table, right?” Watson told the Saginaw News before the season opened last month. “You can’t keep stepping back.

“I want that compete energy, forechecking, aggressive mindset. When in doubt, go hard, play hard.”

So far, the Spirit have been doing just that.

They dropped a 5-2 decision to the Kitchener Rangers to open the new season but have won four straight games since then, including victories over the Erie Otters, Sudbury Wolves, Plymouth Whalers, Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, and then knocked off the defending champion Windsor Spitfires at the WFCU Centre on Thursday night.

Vincent Trocheck has helped lead Saginaw’s resurgence, scoring a team-high five goals and nine points through their first six games. Meanwhile rookie Brandon Saad is delivering on his promise already with four goals and seven points and veteran Josh Shalla has already chipped in with four goals and six points this season.

Saturday’s win against the Greyhounds started with a pair of early goals by Saginaw’s top line of Ivan Telegin along with captain Jordan Szwarz and Michael Sgarbossa.

“It was good to get a good start,” Szwarz said. “It’s always good to get a goal in the first shift to get your team going.”

The Spirit added overage netminder Mavric Parks from the Barrie Colts in the off-season. Parks brings lots of playoff experience from the Colts’ Eastern Conference championship run last season and has won three of his first four starts of the season.

The Spirit also added Sgarbossa and young defenceman Ryan O’Connor in a mid-season trade with the Colts last year.

They hope that trade will pay off this season.

“Everyone’s confidence is real high this year,” veteran defenseman Brad Walch said. “Even the vets that have been here a while are real confident with this group, and they know we could really go far this year.”

Despite holding down first place in the conference, Watson said that he isn’t letting his team get too far in front of itself.

“All it means is that we’re playing better each game,” Watson said.