Reply To: Jasper Camp

http://www.hcdukla.cz/fotogalerie.asp?zobraz=kategorie&kategorie=402 is a link to photo's from the Czech hockey school.

I will give a summary of the practices. I have 4 top asst. instructors and one goalie coach. 22 skaters 96-01 born and 4 goalies. One instructor speaks english and translates for me.

I met the parents and my staff. We did an off ice stickhandling session and on ice we repeated the session and played a lot of cross ice 1-1 games to practice the concept.

I am staying in the GM of the team's place in a little village outside of Jihlava. Beautiful contryside. Now to sleep. I will take some pics.

The facilities are really run down. The gym is from the communist era when this was the Army team and won almost every year. Now there is a hole in the ceiling where the rain comes through and many of the light fixtures are broken with wires hanging down. The rink is about 60 years old but the ice is good. They are building a new practice rink this year and then tearing down the arena and replacing it. The communist era from 67-97 kicked the h-ll out of the country but they are revitalizing everything. There is a lot of unemployment in this city as the huge Bosch plant is working at half capacity making car parts.

Monday we had dryland and I led them through passing technique and they were in 4 skaters groups each with a coachand the goalies did goalie things with there coach. Petr Svoboda played for Toronto and in the American league so he can speak english The other coaches don't speak the Queens language.

We did the same things on the ice as in the dryland and focused on passing technique, passing games and a shootout. We have 4 goalies and 22 skaters. I use 4 large nets and 8 small tires.

After the second ice time Petr set up a 13 station circit that they went throug with 20 " at a station. They did tumbling on gymnastics mats before that. Tomorrow; shooting.They gave me a stick with a huge banana curve so I don't know if I hit anything.