Nationals play two against Gillette

The Glacier Nationals of the North American Tier 3 Hockey League didn't get their season off to the start they wanted to last weekend. But with the Gillette Wild coming to town for back-to-back games tonight and Saturday, the Nationals will have a chance to rebound.

Last weekend, the first of the regular season, the Nationals played two games against the Great Falls Americans, losing the first 11-0 in Great Falls, followed by a 9-0 loss in Havre the next night.

Of course, the Nationals, who are part of the eight-team Frontier Division, need to find a way to score goals and to do that, they will need to generate more opportunities. Against Great Falls, the Nationals struggled to muster shots on goal and were outshot by a drastic margin.

That means that this weekend against the Wild, the Nationals will need to find a way to get more production from forwards such as Brandon Huntington, Gavin Cline and Wyatt Mattfeldt.

While generating more offense puts more pressure on opposing defenses, which would be good for the Nationals, Glacier also needs to do a better job defending on its own side the ice. The Nationals allowed more than 50 shots on net in each of its two losses, which makes it difficult on the goaltender, who is slated to be Misha Pahrebets. On the defensive end of the ice, the Nationals will be looking for improved play from Grant Denton and Brendan Echelbarger.

The Wild should return a strong team after making the Frontier Division playoffs a season ago, but one advantage the Nationals will have this weekend is that unlike the Wild, this won't be their first games of the season.

"You can try to simulate games and practice all that you want," Nationals general manager Butch Kowalka said. "But I think the fact that we have played already gives us an advantage. You just simulate that game action until you play one."

The Nationals and the Wild will square tonight inside the Havre Ice Dome at 8. The two teams will meet against Saturday night, with the first puck set to drop at 7:30 p.m.