VANCOUVER – Playing a Canada West game on home ice for the first time since winning a second straight conference title back in March, the UBC Thunderbirds host the Regina Cougars Friday night for their 2023-24 home opener at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre.
Pegged as favourites to win a third consecutive Canada West title this season – a feat not accomplished in 16 years – the 'Birds will kick off their home opening weekend by hoisting the 2023 banner before quickly turning their focus to resuming the new campaign on solid footing.
"We want to honour last year's team and everything we accomplished, it's going to be emotional and fun and exciting to honour that group and get that banner raised," said UBC head coach Graham Thomas, now into his 12th year with the 'Birds. "But at the same time our focus is on this group continuing to build."
Opening the season on the road in Edmonton last weekend, the T-Birds picked up three out of a possible four points against the Alberta Pandas. Certainly not a poor outing, but still not up to the high standards this group expects of itself, especially with Saturday's overtime loss coming in the fashion it did.
"The learning opportunities we've had, and will have, I think will be very valuable for us. Dealing with some of that adversity early on might be the best thing for us," said Thomas whose team also faced a tough preseason schedule, by design. "We're very confident in this group. The preseason presented a lot of adversity and challenges all the way through so there's been a lot of great things our team can pull from all of those games and also from last weekend."
As for the Cougars, it's a case of back-to-back challenging opponents as they face the two-time defending champion T-Birds immediately after having battled the defending U SPORTS champion Mount Royal Cougars to open the season last weekend. Regina earned a single point against MRU in an overtime loss at home last Friday before falling 6-0 the following evening.
"There are some new faces there, they had a good pre-season," said Thomas of the Cougars. "We haven't seen a lot on them but they look like an improved team. They're always going to play hard. For us, we just need to go out there and play hockey and keep all the extracurriculars off the table."
The T-Birds swept the four-game season series with the Cougars last year by a combined 19-2 margin.
2022-23 saw UBC post a new single-season Canada West wins record with 24 while going undefeated at home. While that win total may be tough to beat, there's no change in the plans to make their home the most difficult place to play in the conference.
"We can't just sit back and think it's going to be tough for teams to play here if we're not tough to play against. We have to earn it and so far we haven't done that. That's been a strong message the last couple weeks, we have to have action. So we've got a clean slate and we have an opportunity to have a fresh start on home ice."
Puck drop for the 2023-24 home opener is 7:00 p.m. Friday at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. Saturday's rematch is set for 3:00 p.m. at Father Bauer Arena. Tickets are available now and both games will be streamed live on Canada West TV.
