The Okotoks Oilers welcome the Sherwood Park Crusaders Friday night to kick off a weekend home stand.

The Oilers are coming off a North Division road trip where they took two of three and are looking to keep their November record above .500, currently 3-2.

Sherwood Park took their first of two games this season in Crusader territory 4-3 on October 24th.

Head Coach and General Manager James Poole says the Oilers will be looking to avenge that game they could have had.

"You've got the youngest team in the league with us and the oldest team in Sherwood Park, our players kind of went into that game with that deer in the headlights mentality that they looked at Sherwood Park's size and really came out of the gate pretty tentative and then all of sudden realized that they could play with them and our young guys really got better and better throughout the game," he says.

Poole says in order to be successful this time around and the Crusaders, they'll need to have the same edge as they did when they opened last weekend's road excursion with a good start.

"Making sure we go with the right mind set to start the game and the same mentality against Whitecourt that we want to be an attacking team, defensively creating turnovers and offensively being aggressive and pushing the pace and when we do that I think we can play with any team in the league and Sherwood Park will be a real good test for us."

The Oilers are 13-10-1 on the AJHL season and a handful of points back of Brooks, Camrose and Canmore for the South Division's top four heading into weekend AJHL action.

Poole says even with the rough October his team have some chemistry and confidence to be right there with the best of them.

"Adversity can make you a better club," he says. "Some of things throughout our six game losing streak that we had, we needed little more team building, we need to build on our team chemistry and we've done that over the last couple weeks since then, we emphasized some parts of our game that need to improve and those areas have improved."

Puck drop goes at 7 p.m. at Pason Centennial Arena Friday, The Eagle 100.9 will have the live broadcast of game starting with the Pre-game show at 6:45.

After the Crusaders, the Oilers will welcome the Calgary Mustangs to town on Saturday night.