Here’s an excerpt from the Hamilton Spectator article by Garry McKay who spoke to Bulldogs head coach Don Lever about his thoughts on his team heading into tonight’s home opener against the Hartford Wolf Pack:

* Goaltending:

“The way (Marc) Denis started, we have to be comfortable there. We have a veteran guy who is playing well, and Cedrick (Desjardins) who now has someone to work with.”

* Defence:

“On the back end we have experience with (Dan) Jancevski, (Alex) Henry and (Shawn) Belle, and some good young guys in (Yannick) Weber, Pavel (Valentenko) and Chad (Anderson). I like the mixture. We’ve got very good size. Weber’s the smallest (5-foot-10) and he’s probably got the most skill.

“I think our size showed with our penalty killing on the weekend (10-for-10).”

* Forwards

“It was probably our biggest question mark. We didn’t know what we were going to get from (Yanick) Lehoux, and (David) Desharnais has had a real good start and so has (Mike) Glumac.
“Now we need to get Max (Paccioretty) going. Once he gets comfortable with the league, I think you’re going to see him break out.

“Our second line, with all the righties Lehoux, Matt (D’Agostini) and (Brock) Trotter, obviously there’s a lot of skill there and pretty good quickness, but they have to play better in their own end.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys. In fact we’ve only got three back from last year, so how long is it going to take us to get going?”

Lever thinks bringing in 6-foot-5, 230-pounder left winger Ryan Flinn also addresses one of last year’s shortcomings.

“We lacked toughness last year and it hurt us when we went to places like Manitoba and Syracuse, and he did his job in our first two games in Winnipeg.”

Though they’re off to a 2-0 start for only the second time in team history Lever doesn’t want to read too much into that.

“We have a long season ahead of us and this is a young team. I’m anxious to see how we react at home. Hopefully we don’t think we’ve already got the Calder Cup in our grasp.”