It's time to play hockey

In Havre, sports and Festival Days go hand in hand, it’s tradition, and you can’t have one without the other. This weekend, the Glacier Nationals of the North American Tier 3 Hockey League open the 2014-15 season and for the first time they will be included in the tradition and pageantry of Festival Days.

The Nationals, who relocated to Havre from Kalispell this past summer, will represent the community of Havre for the first time tonight when they travel to Helena to take on the Helena Bighorns tonight. Then Saturday night, the Nationals will join in the Festival Day’s activities when they make their debut at the Havre Ice Dome against the Great Falls Americans. The first puck will drop at 7:30 p.m.

“We are excited to get out there and play against some outside competition,” Nationals head coach Kyle Bailey said. “Helena and Great Falls are two of the better teams in our division, so it will be good to see how we stack up right at the beginning and see what we need to work on.”

“Most of our guys have never played in a junior hockey game at this level, so it will also be good for them to get a couple of games under their belt,” He added. “It’s time for us to stop beating up on each other and start beating up on some other teams. So we are really looking forward to starting the season.”

The Nationals, who will compete in the newly formed Frontier Division of the NA3HL, will contend with six other teams for four playoff spots at the end of the season. In addition to Helena and Great Falls, the rest of the teams in the division are Billings, Bozeman, Gillette and Yellowstone.

Yet, no teams will present a tougher challenge than Helena and Great Falls, who are among the top teams in the division, and even though his team is akin to the new kid on the block, Bailey is looking forward to the challenge.

“Some people might see it as a bad thing to play the top dogs right away, but I kind of like it,” Bailey said. “It will be good to know where we stand within the division and hopefully we can come away from these games with a couple of wins.”

The Bighorns, who used to belong to the American West Hockey League, are a traditional power in junior hockey and in 2011, they won the USA Hockey Tier 3 Junior national championship. They have also won the AWHL championship seven years in a row. Last season, the Bighorns didn’t just win the AWHL title, they dominated the league posting an incredible 46-1-1 record before defeating the Great Falls Americans in a three-game series for the championship.

The Bighorns will have experience on their side when they play the Nationals as they boast a much more seasoned roster than Glacier, which has just one returning player from last season in Karson Frisk, who scored 10 goals and had 10 assists in 46 games last season. Frisk will be an integral part of the National’s offensive attack along with Brandon Jester, who will play the center position on the team’s top front-line.

However, early in the season Bailey is hoping to rely on his defense and goaltending to stay in games. Ryan Lund who was recently acquired by the Nationals will start out the season as the top goalie on the roster. Defensively, the Nationals have some very good prospects led by the massive Gavin Lubin, who provides an intimidating presence at 6-2, 220 pounds. The other top defenseman for Glacier will be Blake Evennou, who is a good all-around player and will contribute in a number of ways.

“I believe we are going to be pretty strong defensively, and we are ready to take on any attack that comes our way,” Bailey said. “The offense is more of a work in progress but as the season goes on I think we will be able to score with anyone and right away I believe we will be very solid on the back end.”

After going head-to-head with Helena tonight, the Nationals will play their first home game in Havre Saturday night against Great Falls in what should be an electrifying atmosphere. The Americans are another team with a tradition of excellence and along with Helena, they will provide a stern test early in the season for the Nationals, who are young and untested. But even though they are young and inexperienced, the goal is still to make the playoffs by seasons end.

“We are excited about getting the season started,” Bailey said. “We are going to have to work really hard but our goal is to make the playoffs and I believe that we will be a playoff team.”

The Nationals and Bighorns will square off tonight in Helena at 7:05, and Saturday night, the Nationals and Americans will get underway inside the Havre Ice Dome at 7:30 p.m.

The Nationals return to the road next weekend for a pair of division games at Gillette, Wyoming.