Pre-season begins Friday at home vs. Steinbach Pistons
The Winkler Flyers are ready and raring to get the 2025-2026 season started with their exhibition schedule this weekend.
The junior team hosts the Steinbach Pistons Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Meridian Exhibition Centre. They then hit the road for a rematch in Steinbach on Sunday.
Pre-season action wraps up with a home game against the Winnipeg Monarchs Sept. 14 ahead of the Flyers’ regular season home opener versus the Pistons once again on Sept. 19.
General manager and head coach Matthew Melo said last week that they’ve been working hard to get all the pieces lined up for another stellar season of hockey.
The Flyers finished at the top of the regular season standings last spring before seeing their hopes of defending the championship title they’d earned the year before dashed by the Northern Manitoba Blizzard in the semi-finals
The months since have been spent making connections and building relationships with the 2025-2026 crop of players, Melo said.
“Putting together our new group and lots of conversation along the way with connecting with guys who are going to be coming in to town, our current players who we’re trying to retain, and then also just trying to build a lot of relationships with the young players local to Manitoba.
“The league got rid of the draft, so now it’s a little bit different landscape where you don’t just have your draft picks,” Melo added. “It’s kind of open season, open field. So it’s building relationships with families and players and hoping that in the long term that all pays off.”
The Flyers held their main camp Aug. 15-18, two weeks earlier than usual to give the coaching staff a better chance to see as many potential players as possible.
“With some of the changes in the rules, we just thought it’d be nice to not compete with other teams having main camps at the same time,” Melo noted. “It was an opportunity to have our camp a little bit earlier and maybe get to see some younger players, local to Manitoba, that we might not have a chance to see if we were competing.”
About 80 players came out to showcase their skills. That number was halved by the end of the weekend.
“We were really happy with the quality in the camp, especially being that early. It was a really good showing,” Melo said, noting the successful players were invited back to this past week’s pre-season training camp to be further put through their paces.
The end of last season saw the team bid farewell to eight players who aged out of junior hockey, many of whom had played with the Flyers for a number of seasons.
“We lost all of our defense but one from last year,” observed Melo, “so we’ve had a pretty big focus on the back end and stringing in recruits who can really fight for those spots.”
“We feel really good about the recruiting class that we brought in, and we’re excited to keep getting further in this process here [last] weekend, really ramping things up and competing for some of those jobs.
“Other than that, we want to continue building into our culture,” Melo stressed. “We want really good men. We want players who are not only great hockey players, but who have a really strong character. And then the other piece is guys who want to compete, guys who want to work, want to carry on a tradition here of just being the most competitive team, the hardest team to play against.”
Melo has already selected his captain for the campaign ahead: Kam Thomas will lead the Orange and Black on the ice this fall.
“He had an incredible rookie season last year, and he’s been around the program probably his whole life,” Melo said. “He’s a Winkler boy, but more than that, he’s just an incredible kid who can really set the standard, specifically in how he treats people and brings them into our room. He’s also a very good hockey player and he fits the Flyers mould. We were really proud to name him captain this summer.”
The team is also close to announcing who will step into the assistant coaching shoes left behind by Coltyn Bates, who left to pursue other opportunities this summer.
“We have an extended an offer to an individual, who has said yes, so right now we’re just finalizing those details,” Melo said, noting an announcement will be made soon and the newcomer should be behind the bench as the season gets underway.
As things get going on the 2025-2026 season, Melo wants the community to know how grateful the team is for all its fans.
“We love getting to play hockey in this community, and the opportunity that we have as the Winkler Flyers to be supported so well by our incredible fans and the corporate sponsors who allow us to really run the program like we do,” he said. “We think we have the best fans and community in the league.”
