The challenges in the Champions Hockey League are great, and obviously making the playoffs as we've done is one step of success. But overall, for our guys to be able to play teams from other countries is a great experience.

No question we were happy to come through the group, above a team from Finland and winning in Belarus. We were playing against teams with speed and a lot of skill, and we spent a lot of time researching that. We also invested a lot of hours in the off-season, looking for the best players we could find who can score goals. We're lucky that our goaltending is great, but we were also able to bring in some new guys to the team who have experience and offensive production. 

The interesting thing about the CHL is that every league and country has their own culture and style. Finland, Sweden, Switzerland - there are always things that they do differently that we have to learn about before we play. Now we've got several years worth of experience of playing against these teams, we have our own ideas of what we can do to play against them. For example when you look at national teams, Germans have better goal scorers, but the Swiss have better goaltending and defensemen. The skating in Switzerland seems quicker, and while the skill is there with our players sometimes the speed might not be. So we try to counteract that, by being in their face for example. But it's the same as every game, we spend a lot of time on the tactical part of the game to prepare whoever we're playing.

Looking at EV Zug, they have one of my favourite players on their roster in Garrett Roe who played for us before. He's injured at the moment so probably won't play the games, but we have people working on video for us of their team, and then we have our systems that we use to break down the opposition and learn about them before the game.

For us looking ahead it's about "Who do we have that's healthy?", and "Who is playing their best?". Then we also have players coming in from our academy and youth development if needed, who already skated with us in the Group Stage. But what makes sport interesting are the variables, and the moments when teams suddenly come together. The US Olympic team in 1980, the German side in 2018, it's what makes things exciting that the outcomes aren't always predictable. It's hard to predict with so many variables and emotions exactly what will happen, but we're looking for that moment to come together and prevail.