The Okotoks Oilers face one of their toughest test of the season as they start a home at home series their arch rivals the Brooks Bandits Friday night.

The Oilers come into their game in Brooks losers of two in a row against a Bandit squad that's won their last 14 games.

Oilers Head Coach James Poole says he hopes Tuesday's loss to the Calgary Mustangs was a rough wake up call.

"Tuesday was kind of rock bottom for us as a club in terms of how we played and completely getting away from our team identity," he says. "Brooks, Camrose and some of the other top teams in the league have brought some of our best games out in us and playing against Brooks is no doubt one of those challenges that we're going have to be at our best."

The Oilers won the opening game of the season against the Bandits back on September 19 but have dropped the last three.

Heading into their last match ups of the regular season before a possible playoff series down the road. Poole says if his team has a chance against the top team in the South, it all has to start in between the pipes.

"Goaltending has allowed us to stick around in a number of those games and in the 2-1 loss on December 18th, Riley Morris was very solid for us and against Brooks you're going to have to have solid goaltending," he says. "For us its the challenge of discipline on the forecheck and in our d-zone being aggressive trying to create turnovers and not giving them time and space."

Poole also says they'll need repeat effort of their last game vs the Bandits on the penalty kill not allowing their power play to take over the weekend.

"We've given up some short handed goals and that's something that we have to tighten that area of our game up and on our penalty kill we did a really good job in the last road game not so much adjusting to what they're doing but just executing our game plan on the PK a whole lot better, so its going to be almost searching for that perfect game because against Brooks they're going to force you to be at your best."

Game-time in Brooks is 7 p.m. you can catch both games this weekend on The Eagle 100.9, Gino De Paoli has the call starting with the pre-game show at 6:45 p.m.

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