It's like a flashback to his early years with the Swift Current Broncos for veteran defenceman Grayson Burzynski
With six defenceman on the roster who are 17 years old or younger, it reminds Burzynski of the start of his WHL career.
"It's fun," Burznynski said. "I was a young guy once too, like being a young guy on a young blue line too. So I know there's going to be mistakes made and just kind of making sure that there's confidence in the players. Know that making mistakes is okay. They've been great. I've played with pretty much all of them playing shifts here and there with them. It's been fun just kind of keeping them like enjoying themselves and confident."
Speaking of confidence, Burzynski's is at another level so far this season with 10 points in 11 games. He's already close to his previous WHL career high of 13 points in a season.
"I think I changed how I was training in the summer," he noted. "Kind of where I was skating, and we worked a lot more on offense. My confidence kind of just shot up doing that. Playing a lot more minutes, it's easier. You get more opportunity. I'm out at the end of games and I'm on the power play now. That helps as well, but just kind of being confident and trusting my abilities."
The Broncos are 6-5 on the season sitting third in the WHL East Division and fifth in the Eastern Conference.
"I think we have to have confidence in ourselves," Burzynski said before their two wins over the weekend. "We do have a young team; we have a young blue line and that's always tough at the beginning of the year to win some games. But I think there's a lot of potential with our team and I think we can play with those top teams. There's gotta be a ton of belief in this room. Tons of upside. We beat Brandon, Brandon had a good start, we beat Saskatoon, we had our best game of the year against Saskatoon. I think the division can be ours for sure. We've shown that and I think we just need to find consistency in our game."
Swift Current stays at home for two games this coming weekend. They host Lethbridge on Friday and Seattle on Saturday.