Niall Gray talks to Cardiff Devil Bari McKenzie

After two years with Edinburgh Capitals, and coming off his best season statistically, it’s a new challenge for Scottish forward Bari McKenzie. He’s swapped the Scottish capital for the Welsh one and is working hard to ensure both he and the Cardiff Devils enjoy a successful season. Niall Gray caught up with Bari for a quick chat earlier this week.

How did the opportunity arise for you to join the Cardiff Devils?

Basically, as soon as the season had finished, I got in contact with Gerad Adams. He had phoned me and I had spoke to [Devils’ bench coach] Neil Francis as well a few times over email.

As soon as I knew they were interested, it was a ten-minute phone call and I pretty much agreed to sign there and then.

Being in Edinburgh and getting the chance to join Cardiff was just too big an opportunity to turn down. [Gerard] sold the team to me that he was putting together.

It was just too good an opportunity to turn down at the time and hopefully I’ll be here a few more years and have a successful time in Cardiff.

Is your role at Cardiff any different to how it was at Edinburgh?

I would say so, definitely. In Edinburgh I kind of got a free rein as such. In Cardiff, I’m working a lot of stuff in the gym… [Gerard’s] trying to turn me into a complete player.

As we’re speaking now, I’m playing on the top line with Mac Faulkner and Max Birbraer, who are two of the better players in the league.

To teach myself as a British player to be their standard would be a huge bonus for Cardiff. There’s me and Phil Hill who can play on the top two lines and we’ve got a lot of good Brits coming through. Ben Davies has come on in leaps and bounds since I first started in the league, obviously Josh Batch as well and you’ve got Adam Harding out there every day trying really hard.

I’m just trying to make myself a more complete player. [Gerad’s] told me to do similar stuff to the way I played in Edinburgh, but just be like more defensive and I’m just working on that in training every day, working really hard in the gym because when I got the chance to play for a team like this, I really don’t want to pass it up.

So far, so good, because my game has really improved so much training with the players in this squad. We’ve got a great squad here and for any British player you’ve got to improve [when] playing with better players. So far it’s been absolutely brilliant and I’ve had no complaints whatsoever.

Finally, how would you rate Cardiff’s season to date?

I think so far, we’ve done ok. We haven’t actually lost a game in the sixty minutes, we’ve only lost in penalty shootouts. We’re still pretty much a brand new team, you know. So far there’s no team that has blown us out of the water and to be honest I think that we are in a great position to be challenging for titles this year. I just think that the players that they’ve recruited, the imports especially, are phenomenal.

In the games so far, we’ve been controlling most of the games and just a few bad bounces have gone against us. But so far, none of the teams have been [exceptional]. I think with the league we’re in, I think a lot of the teams will take points off each other.

We’ve set team goals and I’m sure we’ll accomplish them and at the end of the season everybody in Cardiff will be very happy with the outcome.

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