Sarnia Sting players will be back at The Hive this week ahead of the 2022-23 season.
The hockey club's orientation camp goes Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by the main training camp beginning Thursday.
Sting General Manager Dylan Seca said they're expecting a real competitive camp, more so than what they've seen the last couple of years.
Sarnia Sting players at training camp. (Metcalfe Photography)
"There's obviously a lot of returning players and depth at every position and that's something we've been working towards the last couple of years. Let's create that depth, let's create that competitiveness, and at that point we hope we'll have a really good hockey club."
The annual Black & White Game in support of the United Way of Sarnia-Lambton goes Friday at 6 p.m. Seca said he expects to see a highly competitive skate.
"Both imports, Sandis Vilmanis and Marcus Limpar Lantz, are in Sarnia. With them and Porter Martone, our first round pick from this previous draft, and just a collection of guys from last season, they're here, they're excited, they're hungry, I can tell you that, and so are we."
Seca said this year's team is going to work hard and that guys should really start to push their games to new levels.
"We kind of saw that with that playoff series against Windsor where we proved to a few other people around the league and to ourselves really that, you know what, we're a better hockey club than maybe we gave ourselves credit for, and the youth that we took advantage of last year is only going to be more mature."
Seca said he's expecting to see some big things for a lot of different guys.
"Teams that are successful in any sport they have this collective, basically agreement with each other, like we're going to push and I'm going to hold you to this new level and what we did [versus Windsor] is we proved to ourselves that we're capable of this, but it takes a lot of sacrifice both on and off the ice."
The Sting begin their preseason with a home and home versus London September 9 and 10. Sarnia's regular season begins in Kitchener September 30.
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Here's the full Orientation Camp schedule:
Tuesday, August 30, 2022 | Progressive Auto Sales Arena Open to the Public
9:30-10:20 AM Team Staubitz Practice
10:30-11:45 AM Team Staubitz vs. Team Haley Scrimmage
12:00-12:50 PM Team Haley Practice
4:00-5:30 PM Team Haley vs. Team Staubitz Scrimmage
Wednesday, August 31, 2022 | Progressive Auto Sales Arena Open to the Public
9:00-9:50 AM Team Haley Practice
10:15-11:30 AM Team Haley vs. Team Staubitz Scrimmage
11:40-12:30 PM Team Staubitz Practice
4:00-5:30 PM Team Staubitz vs. Team Haley Scrimmage
Main Training Camp
Thursday, September 1, 2022 | Progressive Auto Sales Arena Open to the Public
10:30-11:20 AM Team Staubitz Practice
11:30-12:20 PM Team Haley Practice
4:00-5:30 PM Team Staubitz vs. Team Haley Scrimmage
Friday, September 2, 2022 | Progressive Auto Sales Arena Open to the Public 9:00-9:50 AM Team Haley Practice
10:10-11:10 AM Team Haley vs. Team Staubitz Scrimmage
11:30-12:30 PM Team Staubitz Practice
6:00-8:00 PM Black & White Game in support of the United Way Sarnia Lambton
