Typically, we have started our season with the Labor Day tournament in Hershey, and we have often faced some challenging teams, leaving Pennsylvania with few wins and lots of lessons. This year, we were fortunate to play well, ending the weekend with three wins and one loss, scoring a total of 24 goals to 6 against. As tournament math goes, we did not make it to the championship game, but from a coaching perspective, there was a lot of success to build on this weekend.
Game 1 – Capitals Hockey Academy
Lost 1 to 2 – Friday, Aug 30 at 6:35pm – Klick Lewis Arena
Not our best so far – we’ll chalk it up to travel legs. Not a ton of energy out of the gate, but we had some chances of our own. This team had already played a few games, and was positionally sound. They did an excellent job of moving the puck deep into corners and working passes to the center.
Overall, our passing wasn’t great, and physical play was lacking – we had far too many turnovers involving passing and skating into danger.
Game 2 – Piedmont Preds Lower
Won 10 to 0 – Saturday, Aug 31 at 4:10pm – York Ice Arena
This was a good opportunity to focus on improving our passing, build some confidence, and get some momentum going. Overall we did a good job of staying consistent and improved playmaking a lot.
Game 3 – Piedmont Preds Upper
Won 3 to 2 – Saturday, Aug 31 at 8:30pm – York Ice Arena
This was an excellent game and proper competition level for us. We got up 3-0 early, and had to stay disciplined to not let them back in. Turnovers were down, and attempts to make plays were significantly improved.
Keener’s perspective:
Period 1 was text book with great sustained possesions in the O zone with dual passes out of corners into the slot for great backdoor goals. Note how self inflicted turnovers in all zones are way down or non-existent. Smart physical play as well. Thanks to the easy second game we still had legs to make the plays. Also note we had crisp passing out of the Face off wins which we had been lacking in previous games despite the dominance in the circle.
Period 2 – slop fest in the neutral and O zone with dancing on the blue line rather than dumping into the corners. Forwards got to deep and lost ability to effectively back check once we were beat. Let them climb back into it. Also note this is the first period where we lost our overall edge on Face offs and they capitalized by making far fewer turnovers and having sustained offensive sessions. Good physical play though we were starting to lose steam.
Period 3 – Got nervous and tightened up more makign the neutral zone even sloppier and back checking even harder as can be seen by their increase in odd man rushes. Thank you Theo for staying locked in. More smart physical play also helped and as they got desperate mid-period, their two penalties were very helpful for taking the pressure off for a bit. Last two minutes they were content ot let us win but we had poor breakouts letting them just keep cycling in our zone or pickup sloppy pucks in the neutral ice.
Takeaways
- Defensemen should be looking for quicker outlet passes; Wings should be in good support positions, particularly strong side wings.
- Defense did a great job of defending puck carriers – decent gap control, and forced the puck to the board most of the time.
- D to D communications and passing needs work.
- D2 positioning needs work.
- Pucks deep worked – two goals out of the corners into the slot resulted in two of our three goals.
- Still need to work on OZ positioning – need a High forward.
- Theo was great at staying focused and consistent
- We would like to do better at putting pressure on our opponent in the third period. We were on our heels this game as evidenced by the shot count:
- We could stand to work on our shooting accuracy (aim small; miss small):
Consolation Game – Preds Lower
Won 10 to 1 – Sunday, Sep 1 at 12:20pm – York Ice Arena
Perhaps a blessing to have the earlier game since the Championship didn’t start until after 5pm and we had a long way to travel home! Nonetheless, we played the first period a little too loose, but got back in gear during the 2nd and 3rd.