Heading into the second half of the Western Hockey League season Lethbridge Hurricanes General Manager Peter Anholt is confident in the current crop of Canes’. Anholt says when the team plays the way they are supposed to play, they are a hard team to play against.
“I think we had the reputation of being one of the hardest teams to play against in our conference specifically, and I think we have got away from that,” Anholt says. “That is on our players, especially our older guys.”
He explains looking at the WHL schedule there are some hard segments. The first was right before Christmas, followed by the period between Christmas and New Year’s, and finally leading up to the WHL trade deadline. Those are tough periods for the players, but with the trade deadline now behind the team Anholt say the player and coaches alike can focus on their goals for the rest of the season.
Tuesday’s trade deadline didn’t see much action for the Hurricanes squad, with the only move made by the team acquiring goalie Jared Picklyck from the Tri-City Americans for a 10th-round draft pick in the 2025 WHL Prospects Draft. While the Hurricane’s GM looked at making a few possible moves that didn’t pan out, he is calling Tuesday’s trade deadline a good one, because he didn’t have to sit any players down and tell them they were packing up and heading to a new team.
“That is absolutely the worst thing that we do because it is hard on the players – it is hard on the coaches, it is hard on everybody, we didn’t have to do that so that makes it a good day.”
Along with the trade deadline now behind the team, head coach Brent Kisio is also back on the bench after his period with the Canadian World Junior team. Anholt says that while the assistant coaching staff did a really good job in his absence, coming out over 500 out of the 9 games played without the head coach.
“Substitute teacher month is hard on everybody, and I think that now ‘Kis’ comes back details will be better, players will have their ears on a little tighter, and we just need to be a little more detailed in our play. We got away from it in the past little while but I look forward to getting back to it,” Anholt says.
The Hurricanes head into their game Wednesday night against the Swift Current Broncos, sitting 6th in the Eastern division with a 21-15-0-2 record.