PORTLAND – All the ingredients seem to be there for Portland Pirates Coach Kevin Dineen to put a successful team on the ice.
Dineen, in his sixth season with the Pirates, just has to figure out how that mixture goes together.
“We’ve got a mix of everything,” said forward Mark Mancari, entering his third season with the Pirates. “We’ve got a mix of speed. We’ve got a mix of grit. We’ve got guys with great shots and hard-working guys.
“That’s what good teams are made of. It’s not all of one thing.”
The Pirates open their 18th season at 7 p.m. against the Manchester Monarchs at the Cumberland County Civic Center.
For perhaps for the first time in its three-year affiliation with the Buffalo Sabres, the AHL team is a reflection of its NHL parent.
“You look at what Buffalo has, a wide variety of everything, too,” said forward Derek Whitmore, another forward in his third season with Portland. “They’ve got more grit. They’ve added more skill and they have a world-class goaltender. We’re kind of in the same image as those guys.”
Portland’s roster includes 10 players on last year’s opening roster. The 11 newcomers include four players with NHL experience and six AHL rookies.
Jhonas Enroth, who compiled a 2.37 goals-against average last season, is entering his third season as the team’s starting goaltender.
NHL veterans Mark Parrish, Matt Ellis, Colin Stuart and Tim Conboy bring a wealth of experience to the team.
Parrish, who has more than 200 goals over 10 NHL seasons, and Mancari, the Pirates’ scoring leader the past two seasons, are proven goal scorers, while rookie forward Luke Adam, who averaged nearly a point per game in his four Quebec Major Junior Hockey League seasons, has plenty of offensive potential.
Conboy, a 210-pound defenseman, and Dennis McCauley, a 6-foot-3, 225-pound forward in his first season with the Pirates, bring a physical dimension to the team.
“I don’t think we’ve been pushed around the last couple of years,” Dineen said. “But these type of players give us the level of backbone that makes a difference in a hockey game.”
The Pirates will play the same up-tempo style of the Sabres.
“We like to be assertive,” Dineen said. “We like to have the puck on the stick.
“It’s a fun game to play when you’re upbeat, but you also have to be respectful that there’s two ends of the ice. We expect a compete level in the defensive side as hard as there is in the offensive side.”
The Pirates lack experience in the defensive end.
Marc-Andre Gragnani, who has led Portland’s defensemen in scoring the past two seasons, is out with a knee injury, and Conboy is the only defenseman in the lineup with more than two seasons of AHL experience.
“We’ve got some youth on the blue line, and we have an understanding of that,” said Dineen, who is counting on second-year defensemen T.J. Brennan, Drew Scheistel and Dennis Persson to step up their play.
“We know there are guys who really have to take good strides for us to have success, and we’re up to that challenge.”
The Pirates last season played eight of their first 10 games on the road, winning three and losing seven.
This season, Portland opens with its first four games at home.
“There will be some growth,” Dineen said. “I think there was some growth last year, but it took us a while to find our identity as a team. We don’t want to put ourselves behind the eight ball this season.”
“The important thing right now is figuring out how to put it together,” Mancari said. “Once we get it together, I think we’ll be a dangerous team.”
Staff Writer Paul Betit can be contacted at 791-6424 or at: pbetit@pressherald.com
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