The Quad-City Blues will look to rebound this year.

The Blues kick off a 36-game Midwest High School League schedule this weekend at the Quad-City Sports Center, where they host Cedar Rapids at noon on Saturday and again at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

"We got our butts kicked pretty good last year," coach Paul O'Dacre said, recounting a 9-17-6 campaign that placed the Blues 11th in a 14-team loop after a runner-up finish the year before.

"We went from the penthouse to the outhouse in one year, and the kids that had a chance to experience the penthouse certainly didn't appreciate being in the outhouse," O'Dacre said. "Now the rest is up to them."

The Blues return a nucleus of 18 varsity or junior varsity players from last season, and the holdovers spent the offseason getting stronger and quicker through a sports-performance program.

"We should be a lot stronger, a lot bigger and a lot faster," O'Dacre said. "Hopefully, that results in a few more points."

The Blues struggled to find the net last season, averaging 1.9 goals per game.

O'Dacre has moved a pair of defensemen, Rock Island's Xavier Pendleton and Bettendorf's Chris Atha, to the forward corps as a potential remedy.

The recent return of a number of prep football players, including senior captain Matt Bettenhausen, will make the crew a work in progress the first couple of weeks, said the coach.

As the eastern-most crew in a league that includes teams in Kansas City, Lincoln, Neb., and Sioux Falls, S.D. the Blues face a challenging schedule.

"From now until the last week in February, we go pretty hard and travel a lot of miles to play hockey," O'Dacre said.