The beginning of the season is always an exciting experience filled with anticipation of how our team will fare against the competition. What we hope for is to play teams that are challenging enough to give us a real sense of how we need to play and what we need to work on. Despite taking only one game out of the four, this was an excellent start, and the boys responded each game to get better.
Game 1: Fri Aug 30 – 1:45pm – Palm Beach Breakers – Lost 1-2
First game of the season against teams we knew nothing about. Our message was to take the initiative; forecheck aggressively and force them to make mistakes. Keep our shifts short and push pucks deep to set up in their zone. In retrospect, we think we could have played this game better, but what I liked a lot was that we kept working deep into the 3rd.
The fundamental problems we had where
- Passing – too soft, slow to make them, not catching them well
- Urgency – need to speed up our decision-making to take that quick step
- Missed shots (both teams)
Game 2 – Fri Aug 30 – 8:45pm – Jr Everblades – Lost 0-6
Jr Everglades are a solid AA team with all 09s that have been playing together for 4 years. Their positioning was tremendous and their passes were excellent – snapping it around tape-to-tape. This team was undoubtedly a strong team.
We had a couple of things happening (forgot a jersey, slow to get dressed, not a great warmup) that suggested I talk a little bit about discipline and why we can’t get better as a team without it. The boys seemed to take that to heart and we started out holding our own, playing more aggressively against a better team. Second period we suffered a few goals that took some of the wind out of our sails, and it became clear that the Everblades were vibing and we started puck watching.
We had trouble getting the puck out of our zone because
- Wings collapsed down low
- Not enough urgency
- We kept on pushing it up the strong side
- Too many blind passes
- Catching backhand passes, well, any passes, was not crisp. Lots of missed catches.
In addition, our passing speed and hardness have to increase. Our attacks should have someone in the high slot, and not all three forwards collapsing. Hopefully we learned our lesson about retaliating in this game.
Overall, while the score doesn’t reflect it, I thought we battled pretty hard and didn’t quit.
Game 4 – Sat Aug 31 – 1:25pm – Clearwater Ice Storm – Lost 1-6
Our Message: Reminder that we are hear to learn, playing last night’s team was an excellent lesson. Urgency on all plays, Passing must be intentional
We had a much better start, and other than a four-goal 2nd period breakdown, competed against this team much better.
We learned a couple of things from this game:
- Breakout positioning needs work
- We all need to work on puck protection
Consolation Game – 12:20pm – Clearwater Ice Storm – Won 4-0
Message: Same focus on taking initiative, urgency with decision-making. Forwards focus was to enter the zone on the outside, and gain control by getting the puck deep. Defensive focus was to open up the ice with D to D passes.
First shift looked like this would be an even contest, but we quickly established dominance by forechecking and taking the initiative in most puck battles.
Overall, while not perfect, we were passing much better, used more of the ice, and spent a lot more time in their OZ than in ours. We had good individual goals as well as a few great cross-slot pass plays that were much better.
What really impressed me is how the team took our guidance to heart and delivered on the plan, and it paid off!
Overall this was an excellent weekend with some very meaningful ice experiences, lots of time for the boys to gel, and some real progress to kick us off!