Reply To: Diary of a Season 2011-12

[Tom Molloy]

Wed. night is our off ice training night and we did spin class. The leader was Elaine a trathalon and ultra marathon athlete who is married to a former NHLer and current asst. coach. She has boy's playing NCAA hockey and one at an NHL training camp and her daughters are also elite athletes. So a real role model for the girl's.

The varied between hills, speed, recovery for 60' and the did 15 ' of core and stretching.

We plan on doing spin twice a month, plyo's once and to use the court once a month for team play and skills.

They gave us more ice yesterday and a lot of it is on Wed. so I will reschedule the dryland for Monday which is open.

I explained to Elaine how the talent pool is a little thin with having 3 AAA teams in Calgary and that we need to play a real up tempo game to be successful because if we just match skill with skill some teams are a lot deeper in talent.

I had to ask two of my better veteran forwards to play D because there just aren't enough defensemen that can play at this level. We are ok at forward and in the net. So it is a project in the back end as one of our top D has mono and two are F's learning the position.

On-ice practice tonight will focus on doing things quickly and everyone taking defensive reps. We need tighter gaps and D side. They have to play tight gaps in practice or they never will in a game.

We have covered almost all of the team play situations except the 6-5,

We usually get two weeks of two practices and two of 3. So we will rotate each through the themmes.
1-individual offensive skills – the first 30 min. of each practice.
2-team offensive skills.
3-individual defensive skills.
4-team defensive skills.

We can have more on ice if the other two coaches agree to sharing ice for team play practice like we did on Monday. I hope they do. there is one other team close to the city that I will also ask.

I guess if they knew everything then they wouldn't need a coach.

On Sat. we play road game vs a team that outshot the team we lost 3-2 to on Sunday 50-20 but lost the game. It will be a real test as last year they were the division champs and have 14 returning players. It will show us where we are.

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