'We're going to be the proverbial underdog': Islanders carry on without key players

Despite falling short of their goal of winning a league championship, the Charlottetown Islanders still enjoyed their best season ever on the ice and at the gate.

In fact, both the Islanders and their fansenjoyed a record-setting season with the mostwins, points, and goals scored in franchise history.

And, for the first time ever, the Islanders advanced to the third round of the playoffs before being eliminated by the Blainsville-BroisbrianArmada last month.

"We're pretty excited about the season that was," said head coach Jim Hulton."We set a lot of franchise records, the most wins in the regular season, the furthest this franchise went in the playoffs, and while you're disappointed at the time you didn't get to the finals and ultimately compete for a championship, I think with time comes a perspective that it was a historic season for the Islanders and I think internally what we hope we've done is raised the level of expectations. We hope our fans will expect more. We hope our players and our staff expect more."

Expectations will be high, but the team will move forward without some key pieces from last year's team.

"There's always changes'

Gone from the team are players DanielSprong,FilipChlapik, NicolasMelocheandGuillaumeBrisebois.

The team will address its future needs with the upcoming entry draft and through free agency or trades saidHulton.

The departureswill create openings for other players to step forward, but the coach is quick to cautionthat fans will have to be patient during the rebuild.

"One of the things about junior hockey is that there's always changes," Hulton said. "New faces are coming in, old faces are leaving and we have a lot of old, familiar faces that helped us a lot."

The coach pointed out thosefamiliar facestook thefranchise from a position lower in the standings and then gradually got it to a point ofthe most historic season in franchise history.

"So the Sprongs, the Chlapiks, the Kileys, they're going to be missed and extremely hard to be replaced, but every franchise goes through it. A lot of the focus is on who's leaving, not who's staying, but we're pretty excited about next season with who's staying."

While Hultonand his staff will look for players that could potentially be on the roster next season, the team is also hoping to attract more fans to the rink.

Last season, the team had about 1,500 season ticket holders and over 100 businesses on board.

"It's no secret that without that support obviously we couldn't continue to survive as a franchise," saidDirector of Sales and Marketing Jason Mclean. "It's a must and, as I said, people were more obliging, more than obliging to step up and help out, and even the renewal process now going through the season we've just finished."

McLeanadded he feels with the growing support the team is slowly but surely becoming a big part of the Island.

"We're out pounding pavement, we're sitting down meeting with business owners, we've plans ready as to what we're launching for our season tickets, making sure that that's there, so in order to make the hockey season run smoothly and the way it should, then the hard work actually happens over those summer months."

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