I see the site passed 4 million hits last night. Pretty good for just over 2 years. I sent out both books and a flash drive earlier in the week to two coaches in the USA. The flash drive is an incredible resource with 8 GB and 1400 hockey files.
Our 5-2 win over the only undefeated team last Sunday earned us a spot in the Notre Dame tournament early December. There are always a lot of college scouts there looking for players. I attended the tournament to recruit when coaching college level and got some good players from it. That and the Mac's after Christmas will give my 94 born players a lot of exposure and put some younger players on the radar. I have a lot of girl's capable of being good college players and a few capable of being outstanding players at that level.
At tonights practice Sean will work with the D for 20 minutes while I take the forwards and do some cycling and battling. We have a specialty team scrimmage with another AAA team tomorrow and that will be good preparation for our Saturday game vs a team we lost 2-3 and defeated 4-1 earlier in the season.
Last night we did bicycle spin class and core work at the NSD training centre. I took a six minute video showing the workout for a few minutes, the facility and a boy's soccer football team doing skill work and then a keepaway game followed by 3-3 with Jokers at each offensive end. I filmed this because it is basically an ABC's practice and football is far ahead of hockey coaching in using game situations.
I gave out the reversible practice jerseys with out logo and numbers. White on one side and green the other. It took a long time to get them. Looks like I am the only one around here using them so they had to be custom made. Just seems logical to me but I am a Physical Eduacation Teacher, who coaches hockey and see things through teachers eyes most of the time.
http://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/mediagallery/media.php?f=0&sort=0&s=20111027083519736
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Practice Plan Oct. 27 - 75 minutes
10'
Agility and Balance finishing with a shot.
10'
B6 3 shots-3 passes-3 zig zags 3lanes and a shot.
10'
D and one goalie with Sean F and one goalie with Tom
F-s B6 angling behind the net come back 1-1 and shoot.
10'
D and one goalie with Sean and F with Tom.
Forwards
B5 Forecheck and angle
10'
Nat with one goalie at one end.
B5 Loose Puck Battles-only one way.
All players green vs white.
Keep track of goals.
Battle for the puck take it over the blueline then attack 1-1 and 2-2
10'
One goalie with Nat at one end.
DT400 – 2-2 with Back Pressure.
12'
DT100 Support from Point-Defend-Attack
5’ passive support and 7’ active support.
7'
Rebound at each end.
Finish with 1’ team gather around the middle circle.
We had a specialty team practice with another Calgary U18 AAA team. They were motivated and we were flat and they scored a lot more than we did. It did allow some new lines and new D to work together.
Saturday we played the other Calgary team. They are ahead of us in the standings but have played 3 more games. They were 6-3-3 and us 6-3. We lost to them the second week of the season 2-3 and beat them two weeks ago 4-1. Today we won 2-1. They scored with 30 seconds left to ruin the shut-out. We worked hard and outshot them 32-28. Our goalie was very good as was theirs.
It wasn't either teams best game but we found a way to win. Encouraging that we are 6-1 in our last seven games and have only given up 9 goals in those 7 games. We started the year at 1-2 and gave up 10 goals in our first 3 games.
So the individual defensive skills such as dside, stick on the puck, stick in the lanes, angling have made a huge difference. We taught the technique in drills and then use games and transtion games to put them into realistic situations.
Two games next weekend. One vs the team who schooled us in the specialty team scrimmage and one vs. Medicine Hat who we handed their first loss to last weekend. We will be missing our captain who is a very good D, who is visiting her brother at college.
This week two on ice and one off ice session before the weekend games. The lighter week will be good for the players to get their scholl work done and recover, as we haven't had many days off in the last two weeks and we have an 11 day in a row stretch coming up. I think I will cancel one of the practices in the middle of it.
'Enjoy the Game'