Reply To: Diary of a Season 2011-12

[Tom Molloy]

Paul planned a good session for evaluation. Lots of competition to identify players.

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As far as a good chance to show the coaches how you play this tryout is about as fair as you can get. Monday they started a tournament. There are about 12 skaters on each team. There are six teams and each played a game of 2x25min. stop time periods. They do this again tonight and Saturday. Friday is a goalie only practice.

I have to submit between 4 and 8 players who were on last years club as protected players today. I only have 6 returning and they all can play at this level so I will protect everyone.

On Sunday all the non protected players have a game followed by a draft of goalies first and then skaters. I can protect one of the 2 returning goalies. There is a 30 min. window after the draft to make trades. It makes the NHL draft seem simple.

The draft has a rotation of 1-2-3, 2-3-1, 3-1-2 so it is probably an advantage to chose second because then you get the 4th overall. A former NHL D is one of the coaches and his daughter, who is the strongest draft eligible D, is in the draft and is automatically his first pick. Draft order is by picking straws. So it will be a challenge to get the kind of players a coach wants.

At first glance it looks like there are enough good players for two strong teams, we have only two U15 teams supplying 3 U18 teams and some of them end up going to sports schools. So it is critical that the last 3 forwards and the last 2 D can skate and compete hard. So that is what we are looking for. We have 4 F and 2 D returning so must pick 5 F and 4 D as the roster limit is 15 skaters and 2 G.

The top Calgary team finished with a 50% w/l record last season, the other two were under.500. So it will be a challenge. If you have a few scorers and the rest buy into the system and compete hard you can do well.

Attachments

• Prep Camp 5.pdf (2 MB)

'The Game is the Greatest Coach'
'Enjoy the Game'