Practice Time in the Last Week Before we Head to Canada

This is it. Our last week in Oregon before our trip to Pelham, Ontario! A small section of the team practiced yesterday for 2 hours on the ice. We had only 6 players and our goalie, but we made the best of our ice time. The rest of the team was away for the Holidays. Although we, as coaches, had wanted to get more ice time for the whole team before the Canada tournament, we were happy with the results of yesterday’s practice. We were able to spend one on one time with each of the kids. This allowed us to work on kid specific things. We left the choice up to the individual kid: what do you want to work on? It worked out well.

The conditioning was high too as with so few players, they ran through each team drill quickly which meant very little rest time in between runs. They worked hard and did well.

We will have a few more opportunities to get on the ice this week. I am encouraging all of the players to come to open stick time tonight as well as Saturday. We have dry land conditioning on Friday and one final practice on Sunday. This is our ice time and will be a full team practice.

I have encouraged the parents to talk with the kids and offer them extra emotional support as we get closer to the tournament. I imagine the kids might be nervous as this is a big deal. As I told the parents: “I go to win, but I will be proud of the kids and happy with them no matter what the scoreboard says. This is for them to have fun and an amazing life experience.” If you see any of the kids in this last week, please make sure they know you support them no matter what. The little extra support may be the difference in their experience.