Oil Caps Set for 2014-15 Season

  The Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s regular season opens Friday, and the Virden Oil Capitals will open with a very tough opponent.
 
  The Oil Caps host the Portage Terriers at Tundra Oil & Gas Place, with the Terriers already guaranteed a long season thanks to being the hosts for the RBC Cup National Junior A Championship in May of 2015.
 
  It also means Virden will get an early opportunity to gauge themselves against one of the favourites for the 2014-2015 MJHL title.
 
  "It’s nice to find out early where you’re at and where your group is at and then build from there," said Virden GM/Coach Troy Leslie earlier this week, "We play them three times early in the season and it’ll be good for us to sit back and evaluate where we’re at and what we need to do."
 
  The Oil Caps do return four of their top five scorers from last season in Corey Haverstick, Lucas Oliver, Jake Dudar and defenceman Kevin Pochuk.
 
  Virden finished with a 32-24-4 record in 2013-2014 and advanced to the seond round of the Turnbull Cup playoffs.
 
  "We kind of met our goal last year of getting through a playoff round and seeing our guys in the semifinals," said Leslie, "There’s no reason to believe that our expectation can’t be higher this year in terms of being in that upper echelin of the league."
 
  The Oil Caps also return an experienced defence core than includes four players that played a year ago in Pochuk, Jordan Greig, Taylor Fisher and Brad Reichardt while off-season acquisition Brett Sharples, who played last year with the Dauphin Kings, also provided addition experience on the back end.
 
  Virden also features experience in goal with Kyler Beckett back for his third season with Virden but his first as the undisputed #1 man between the pipes.