Flyers looking to make gains in back half of the season
They’re not necessarily where they’d hoped to be at this point in the season, but Winkler Flyers head coach and general manager Matthew Melo is feeling pretty good about the back end of the campaign after the holidays.
At press time Dec. 17, the Flyers were 14-13-1-2, which gave them 31 points and the fifth-place spot in the MJHL’s MGEU East Division standings.
That put them well behind the top three teams—the Niverville Nighthawks in first place with 53 points, the Steinbach Pistons in second with 47, and the Portage Terriers in third, also with 47—and just one point short of the Selkirk Steelers in fourth place.
They still had two more games to go before the holiday break—playing Steinbach Dec. 19 and the Winnipeg Blues Dec. 20.
Looking back on the first half of the 58-game schedule, Melo says it has been challenging at times as the junior team works to rebuild after losing many key players from last season.
“But I think we’re still feeling pretty confident as a group that we can make the playoffs,” he said. “And that if we get in, that we can win a series, that we can gain a little bit of traction and really make some noise.”
The 2024-2025 season saw the Flyers fall short of defending their championship title from the year before, getting knocked out by the Northern Manitoba Blizzard in four straight games in the semi-finals. They had finished the regular season at the top of both the division and overall league standings.
But last spring also saw them lose eight graduating players, leaving some big holes to fill in both their offensive and defensive lines.
“We had a ton of turnover, and it took some time to shape the group,” Melo said, noting, however, that they’ve had some good runs this fall, either racking up several straight wins or suffering very close defeats.
“Up until our latest losing streak, we had gone 10 straight games getting a point,” he said. “I think we’re still growing as a group. There’s times where it seems like we’re a little bit immature in our game and then there’s other times where we feel that we’re building something pretty cool here.
“For us, it’s about finding a way to even out some of those stretches where we’re not so high … I think that is for us just continuing to grow in maturity.”
Win or lose, Melo is proud of his players for really stepping up and giving it their all.
“When you’re a younger group, that’s where it takes some time to learn and you go through some of these challenging stretches where you need guys to figure out who’s going to step up. You need everybody to play a little more to what they have to offer to their strengths, to their potential.
“It’s guys embracing leadership and embracing their individual roles and what they need to bring for the entire group to have success.”
The East Division has proven to be a competitive one, with Niverville, Steinbach, and Portage having a lock on the top three spots by a wide margin.
But the Flyers are still very much in it, Melo said.
“I would say those top three teams have kind of separated themselves from the rest of the league, but up until this weekend, we had basically played Niverville to one-goal games in our first three meetings with them. And we’ve played Portage tight as well—we lost in a shootout to them twice.
“So I do think we’re right there and it’s a matter of minimizing the lows,” Melo said. “I think there’s lots more potential for us … we can play with anybody in this league when we’re playing at our very best. So it’s just as a group learning how to be more consistent in playing to that identity, playing to the way that we know we need to play to have success.”
The Flyers are back in action with back-to-back games against the Winnipeg Monarchs Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 in Winnipeg followed by a game in Selkirk Jan. 6.
