The Preseason is officially over for the JRFlyers Premier Team. After a slow start and back to back losses to the Hampton Road Whalers, the JRFlyers won the next eight games to finish out the preseason. The teams the JRFlyers were going up against were College teams and rival teams in the EHL. It feels like the players were just here for Tryouts not long ago, but this weekend the season will officially begin. Head Coach Jerry Domish took the time out for an interview to tell us about his team this season.

“At the beginning of preseason as a coach you're not sure who plays well together and what chemistry you have. But as it went along, we found a line: (Luke) Benitez is playing with Ludvig (Nilsson) and (Hayden) Taylor and that line started to play well. We needed a combination for Tom Dougherty to play with, and recently Eddie Russell signed with us and Matt Shipko, and that line is playing well. The surprising thing is that we don’t really have a fourth line. Right now I would say that we have a first line and a bunch of second line players which is really good and our depth is really good.”

The next time the jerseys are put on it will be the real deal. The JRFlyers dive right into the regular season on the road for a three games. Two games against the East Coast Wizards and one against the Walpole Express. The team has impressed Domish so far and now he wants that to carry over as the season starts.

“Everyone is playing like they are not going to get equal ice and not everyone will dress every game so I hope that intensity continues to be here, but more importantly I'm hoping to get off to a 5-0 start. I think we have the goaltending for it. We’ve been very impressive in the preseason at winning at the end of games. We scored two goals against the Little Flyers in the third period to win, we scored in the third against Rutgers to come out with the win and we scored in overtime against William Patterson to win the game. We were missing that last year because we lost a lot of one goal games.”

The team itself has a great core of veteran leadership. The way Captains are selected is that the team votes for who they believe should be Captains.  This year your Assistant Captains are Defensemen Tyler Williams and Chris Butryn and the new Captain of the Philadelphia JRFlyers is center Tom Dougherty. Coach Domish likes what he sees from them so far and told us about each of them.

“To some degree I think Doc was one of the leaders last year even though he wasn’t a captain. He comes by it naturally and I think all the kids look up to him. He is very level headed and very positive. Tyler Williams leads by example, maybe needs to be a little bit more vocal, but every day he is out there doing all the right things in practice, and in games. And Chris Butryn is very vocal and another guy that the kids look to. It’s his third year here so he is our longest tenure player on the roster.”  

Game Schedule

All games are at The Edge Sports Center

Friday vs East Coast Wizards 4:35pm

Saturday vs East Coast Wizards 3:00pm

Sunday vs Walpole Express 12:40pm

*** Saturday and Sundays Games will be Showcase Format 2-25 minute periods

It’s all positive vibes coming from the JRFlyers right now. Now it’s time to take the ice and make it count. The excitement is here and the wait is over, let’s get this started!

By Joe Sindoni

Staff Writer

Play by Play Announcer