CALGARY, AB — With the first win under their belt, the Calgary Roughnecks are ready to get rolling.

After starting off last season with an 0-6 record, the Roughnecks did not want to go through that again, so their win against the New England Black Wolves helped build the teams confidence.

Now, they want to build off of that important win.

“We were almost starting to question ourselves,” admitted defenceman Scott Carnegie. “We needed that first win. We didn’t want to start the way we did last year.”

“Last year, you never wanted to go through that. It was hard,” reminisced captain Mike Carnegie. “Right now, we’re in a good spot to get back to .500 and if we can repeat some of the efforts we’ve had with goaltending and defence, we should be there.”

Despite matching 1-2 records, Calgary and Vancouver have taken much different paths to get to there.

The Stealth have been very inconsistent to start the year. After losing their season opener 17-7, they rebounded to beat the Saskatchewan Rush 13-11, but the Mammoth rocked them 14-5 the next weekend.

Averaging 14 goals against and only 8.33 goals for, it’s fortuitous that the Stealth have won a game.

With Vancouver’s best game being on the road, the Roughnecks know they will be up against an aggressive rival.

“This is a huge game,” said Scott Carnegie. “It’s Vancouver, it’s a divisional game, and they are coming off of a shellacking this past weekend, so they’re going to hungry. I think it’s for our confidence, for this building, there’s so many reasons why we need to win this game.”

“Any time you play anybody in the West, you want to win,” added Mike Carnegie. “You want to be better than them. It would be nice to get our first win at home this year. I think there’s a lot of things pointing at this being a large game.”

On the Roughnecks side of things, they’ve been playing really well defensively, holding opposing offences to under 10 goals per game.

A factor in that is the play of goaltender Frankie Scigliano. The big man has been excellent in his first year as the Roughnecks starting goaltender.

“I think that we’ve been playing great,” Scott Carnegie said. “Our goalies have been really good, the defence has been great.”

However, there is still room to get better.

“I think there’s lots to improve on,” opined the captain. “We’re playing okay. I think our goaltending is A+ right now. Frankie is playing unbelievable right now. You can rely on him for four quarters. He’s playing with a lot of confidence and that’s what you want to see out of your goalie. I think both defensively and offensively, we can get better.”

Coming off of a bye-week, the worry is that the team will be a bit rusty.

That’s not a concern for Calgary, though. They have plenty of fresh, young legs and the team has been diligent about keeping up with their fitness during the time off.

Those fresh legs will be needed on Saturday as the Stealth bring a talented and fast transition game to the Rough House.

“Transition will be huge,” noted Scott Carnegie. “They like to run, they have some athletes on the back end. If we can cut off their transition and score a couple of our own, that could be the difference.”

Another difference could be the Roughnecks offence.

Having not been able to reach that 10-goal plateau so far this season, they will be aggressive in looking to hit that mark.

They benefit by facing a Stealth defence that has allowed 14 goals per game through three games this season.

While the offence would love to open the floodgates, they are solely looking for enough goals to earn the win.

“To get back to .500, we just need to keep doing what we’re doing,” said Scott Carnegie. “It’s just a matter of time before our offence breaks out.”

Back to News

Related Posts