Sports
Sheridan Hawks Hockey Team Ready To Start 2024-25 Season
Published
1 month agoon
The season starts on Friday, September 6th for the Sheridan Hawks as the team will play a 2-game series at Great Falls.
Last year, the team missed the playoffs by 4 points in the standings.
Part of that reason was that the team started the season out poorly, winning only 4 of their first 20 games.
The Hawks eventually recovered to get themselves into the playoff chase, but came up short in the end.
Head Coach J.J. Santagata says some of the players back then didn’t put a lot of heart into the games.
This year the coaching staff has been trying to install a more serious approach within the players.
“From Day 1 that they’ve been here, we’ve just been preaching to them that it all starts with a quick start. We’ve found outside of a playoff spot before showcase even started and had to fight and crawl to get back into a playoff spot, and we were just short, so we don’t drop and have a really bad first 2 months of the year last year, it’s probably a different story, so this year we’re just really preaching, getting off to a quick start, playing as a team, buying in the group and hopefully things go well.”
Last season, the Frontier Division arguably proved it was the toughest of the 5 divisions in the NA3HL.
Division Champ Helena ended up winning the Frasier Cup, and Gillette, who qualified for the Frasier Cup Tournament as a wild card, made it to the semi-finals.
Santagata says for the most part, the one thing that this year’s schedule is going to have is an abundance of competition.
“I think the Frontier is probably one of, if not the best division in the NA3HL. You got Helena that is constantly making pushes to the Frasier Cup, Gillette’s been in the wild card spot, or going to the Frasier Cup every single time, so Great Falls was in the playoffs last year, Bozeman was in the playoffs, there are always good teams. Last year there was a 3-headed race for that 4th spot, so it’s going to be the same thing every single year. We know we’re going to get grinding games out, competitive games, in your face, physical, fast pace, so that’s what we recruited, that’s what we got, so we’re going to be ready to go this year.”
Sheridan will play 13 of their first 18 games on the road.
The home opener is Saturday, September 14th vs. Gillette.