Kilty B’s retooling for 2019
The Hamilton Kilty B’s appear to be in a full-blown rebuild mode for the upcoming season.
The 2019/20 Kilty B’s will bear little resemblance to last year’s squad which saw them finish in third spot in the Golden Horseshoe Conference of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League.
“We lost everybody,” Hamilton general manager Brian Rizzetto said.
According to Rizzetto, the Kilty B’s lost two players to the Ontario Hockey League, two more to the British Columbia Hockey League, two to the Brooks Bandits of the Alberta Junior Hockey League, and seven or eight to the Ontario Junior Hockey League.
“You can’t be upset about that because that’s what they’re playing for,” he said.
The Kilty B’s are returning big forward Freddie Teeple (36-4-3-7-184) and possibly Holden Rogers (44-13-17-30).
After that, it’s a brand new roster.
“We’re going to be four balanced lines,” Rizzetto said. “I don’t think we have any superstars but we like the kids we have so far.
“Maybe our challenges will be on the defensive side to start. We like the two goalies we picked. We’ll put a lot of load on them at the start because we’ll be young and inexperienced. I think we’ll be a little bit bigger than we were. I’m not sure of our speed yet. I have nothing to gauge it against.”
Rizzetto, who previously worked as a GM for the Caledonia Corvairs, was off last season off as the Corvairs took a leave of absence.
“I let everybody else have a chance to win the division,” he said. “I had a lot of time to go watch players.”
Rizzetto isn’t trying to emulate what he did in Caledonia.
“Out motto is we’re always going to be a young team so we’ve got quite a few 17-year-olds,” he said. “We like their talent but they haven’t been put into battle yet, so we’ll see.
“We don’t expect anybody afraid to play us, that’s for sure. We’re going to be young and learning.”
The Kilty B’s promoted John Barrett to head coach after Ken Peroff left for an assistant’s position with the Guelph Storm.
“We went with the guy who was with the organization for four years,” Rizzetto said.
Rizzetto said he is still hoping to add one or two forwards and one or two defencemen.
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