Preseason games mean nothing in the standings, but are a necessary tool for evaluating prospective talent, and to see a team’s potential strengths and weaknesses.

In the two preseason games against the Greenville Road Warriors at Germain Arena this weekend, new Florida Everblades coach Greg Poss and fans had a chance to see for themselves what the team may look like this season – big, athletic and offensive.

Including Friday’s 6-5 win, the Everblades scored 10 goals in the two contests. Saturday’s 4-2 victory put their speed and size on display, but Poss downplayed the weekend effort.

“I thought today’s game was better than yesterday’s (Friday),” said Poss. “At times I felt we overpassed the puck, but we have to keep in mind that Greenville has only been practicing for a week. The Greenville team we will see in two weeks during the regular season will be a different team.”

Downplay it or not, the strengths of this year’s Everblades were noticeable from the first drop of the puck Saturday night. Being bigger and more athletic, they are harder to take off the puck when pressing into their opponent’s zone – attributes which directly contributed to two of their goals.

On defense, they are not only bigger, but play better team defense, which showed during their four penalty-kill situations where they didn’t allow a quality scoring chance.

The Blades’ potential strengths look obvious. The hard part is yet to come, cutting the roster to the league mandate of 23.

“We have some real tough decisions to make,” Poss said of trimming the roster. “We executed well (Saturday night). The guys who played tonight did a good job of following the game plan and, because of numbers, we will have some hard decisions to make.”

Making the decision tougher is knowing that, at any time, players can get called up to the AHL, a problem that plagued the Everblades the last two seasons – losing their best talent to callups. Based on what was seen on the ice this weekend, the biggest problem Poss will have is finding room for it all on the roster.

The Everblades open their regular season play at home on Friday against the Gwinnett Gladiators.