Player development is taking on a bigger focus for the Moose Jaw Minor Hockey Association (MJMHA) heading into the 2018-19 season.

The local organization has announced an agreement with Western Prospects Hockey's Taras McEwen and Matt Scott to lead its 2018 development program.

"Western Prospects come with a good reputation, good experience, they bring a lot of knowledge and they've been doing development for Notre Dame in the province, so we're looking to draw on those experiences in our player development," said Patrick Boyle, who's in his first season as the president of Moose Jaw Minor Hockey.

McEwen and Scott are both certified Hockey Canada Skills Instructors, while McEwen is also the Manager of Scouting and Operations with the Kootenay Ice of the Western Hockey League. 

Western Prospects Hockey will be running six development sessions per team across the association throughout the season.

"They'll really be focusing on skating and skating development at the younger levels," said Boyle. "We're going to be looking at trying to improve our skating, our skill development, edge control, all those things for the younger divisions and then as we go up into the older divisions, that will have a benefit for years down the road."

The sessions will part of regular practice times for teams and the focus will be to have the sessions in the younger divisions -- novice and atom -- to really emphasize skating development through the first few months of the season.

The tier programs will also be going through the development sessions with the focus changing as they get into the older divisions.

"We're going to try to get a lot of that development in early, as soon as we hit the ice in October," said Boyle.

"(Early in the season) is a key time for the younger players in development and we really want to invest as much as we can into that skill development process. The older divisions will work on where they want to see skill versus skating and then the tier program will have some added sessions."

MJMHA will be spending about $35,000 on skill development this season and Boyle is hoping that this is just a start. He wants to see the association continue to turn its focus more towards skill development than just wins and losses.

"To me, this is just the beginning," said Boyle. "We'll be looking at increasing our fees next year, potentially, to invest even more in development, we want to increase what we're doing moving forward and really give an experience to a lot of the kids in the association and keep them moving forward."

The new season is just around the corner for the MJMHA with tier tryouts continuing through the end of the month and then the house leagues will start selecting their teams.