There are few events on the Junior A hockey calendar more exciting than training camp.

A sense of newness resounds throughout the Civic Auditorium. Players are excited to be back onto the ice. The long off-season is over; the dog days of November are two months away.

Every team is undefeated. Nobody really knows how good, or how bad, their team will be. Pundits like me will try to make predictions, but Junior A hockey is a very unpredictable sport.

After all, nobody at this time last year thought that the La Ronge Ice Wolves would win the SJHL in 2010.

There is no better way for a local hockey fan to spend their Labour Day long weekend than watching scrimmages inside an antiquated, frigid, 53-year-old hockey arena.

Unfortunately, the excitement usually hasn’t lasted very long.

And yet there are reasons to look forward to this season.

For one thing, Spectra Place should be finished at some point during the season. The Civic Auditorium has history and tradition. But the building is a dump. Its design and its amenities make it a relic, and it has been a deterrent when trying to recruit skilled hockey players.

Nineteen players are back from last season’s non-playoff team. But most of those returning players were acquired via mid-season trades, after the Bruins were in rebuilding mode.

We'll see what Ryan Andersen, Mark Cross, Kyle Johnson, Lucas Stubel and Ty Ariss can do as 20-year-olds. We'll see what a year of junior experience means for Dylan Smith, Justin Waskewitch, Michael Hengen, Brett Rock and Tyler Spencer.

Three 20-year-old newcomers have won league titles in Junior A – goaltender Joel Danyluk and forwards Ben Findlay and Troy Hunter. Forward Ward Szucki will also be a welcome addition.

Thanks to Danyluk’s arrival, the Bruins won’t enter training camp trying to guess the identity of their No. 1 goaltender. In recent years, goaltending has been a question mark at the start of camp. The only question mark with Danyluk is “How good will he be?”

If this team is to contend, they will need one or two top-notch defencemen, but most of the pieces are in place for the Bruins to have their best team since 2005, when they were among the best teams in Canada for most of the season. A trip to the conference final would be a realistic expectation for this team, but some think this team is capable of even more.

The Bruins brass has done a good job of recruiting talent in recent years, but that hasn't necessarily translated into a good team. The team has to be better than good this year. If the team fails, some good hockey people will lose their jobs.