Reply To: Diary of a Season 2011-12

[Dwight Trumbower]

Posting for Tom.

Merry Christmas.

I am just leaving to do a camp in Jasper.

We did the 5 hour drive north to play two games on Saturday. The team is third in the Northern Division and I think we underestimated them.

They were all over us the first period of game one but our goalie was good and it ended 1-1. We picked up our game a lot and ended up scoring with 2:03 left to win 2-1.

Game two we played better overall but had a bunch of mental lapses and took a string of penalties in the second. It was 0-0 after one and we had more scoring chances. They got 3 pplay goals in the second. That matches the number of pplay goals against the last ten games. One was with a two man advantage. Score 3-0 after two.

We dominated the third and scored two pplay goals and missed some open nets but a D made a bad pinch and they scored on the resulting breakaway. I pulled the goalie with 1:30 left and the score 4-2 and they got an empty netter to win 5-2. Shots were 33-22 for us.

They were the hardest working team we have played so far this season. So we stay in third place in the South Division for the Christmas break.

This week:
Monday – off
Tuesday – 90 min. on ice practice
Wed. – spin on the bikes and core exercises.
Thursday – 75 min. practice
Friday – I cancelled the practice so they can stay home and be with their families at Christmas. It looks like some of the players are mentally and physically spent and I thin the three days off will help to recharge them before our big tournament the Mac's that starts Dec. 26, 11:30 at the Flames community arena.

I got an email from Kalle Kaskinen who does a lot of work with Juhani in Turku, Finland. He is an assistant coach of the Finnish team at the World Juniors. They are in Calgary training until Friday and then they go up to Edmonton to play in the first round. I leave for a camp in Jasper this morning and we have planned to get together on Thursday.