Imperial - Cardiff 1:5
Hi All,
although unfortunate we lost against Cardiff, I think there are some good things we can take away. First of all, officially the score was 5-1 to Cardiff, but Rich tells me that their 4th goal did not actually cross the line. That means the score was really 4-1 to them. Seen how we played this is not that bad at all and a clear improvement over our away game against them. Like we did against Nottingham C we went up, played with them and then crashed down again.
I have to add that i think everyone bar Serkan (who played an excellent game and deservedly got MotM) gave me an excuse for their performance. While i certainly hope there will be no excuses come the nationals, I like to think that if everyone played their best we would have done even better.
I will be changing the lines more drastically for the training session next week as it looks like we won't have any more games before the nationals. I hope you can all make it to the training sessions therefore to make sure we get some good lines to the nationals.
I might try and organise some sessions in the park on rollerblades before the nationals and do some other stuff in preparation.
a couple of key points that i noticed from yesterday's game:
1) Mark the man. Think about the field and where you are supposed to be. Our LW marks their RD, our RW marks their LD, our RD marks their LW, our LD marks their RD and our centre marks their centre. So 1 on 1 there should never be any free players in front of our goal. This happened a couple of times
2) if you are a winger, your job is to mark their point man. Period. There are no ifs and no buts. IF one guy in the corner is unmarked.... not your job. Mark the point man. IF the puck bubbles loose in the corner..... not your job, mark the point man. IF the point man goes in deep, you follow him. Basically you are supposed to mark the man and prevent him from getting the puck. So if he goes in you follow but only if he goes in. Don't mark the blue line, mark the man. And when I say mark the man, i mean like a fly on shit, not 3 metres away.
3) Defenders: Do not stand still. If you are standing still you are as good as a pylon. They'll just skate around you. They can see exactly how far your stick extends, and go round. Easiest thing in the world. You should be skating at all times. Now here is the trick, theoretically you should be skating backwards, facing the attacker. Then when you see your opportunity you brake, poke your stick and dislodge the puck. Attack is over. If you cant skate backwards, skate forwards alongside him, then keep hitting your stick against his (but no slashing) and dislodge the puck. You don't necessarily need to get control of the puck, although that would be nice. Your main objective is to halt the attack and dislodging the puck is enough. So tap his stick up, push it to the side, whatever, make him lose control.
All you need to do to see how effective this is is to look at Rich B. Do you ever see him skate backwards? Rarely. But he comes alongside their attacker, taps the stick, dislodges the puck and the attack is over. For as far as I can remember, his line has not conceded a goal in 3 games.
4) backcheck. We have to be quicker on the backcheck. Defenders: as soon as the puck changes possesion in the offensive end, you get youu ass back to our end. Don't wait around in case our attackes get it back. Don't think you can get it back. As soon as it changes possession, or you feel it is about to change possession, you skate back. And skate back hard. We keep getting caught out far too often. Rich C has been doing an excellent job in goal and stopped a lot of their breakaways but we can't rely on that solely.
5) Skate hard. On the warmup you were all just lazing around. I need to see you all skate hard, warmup properly. When I used to play and didn't warmup properly i almost certainly would have a bad game. It is so important to do a real proper warmup. a warmup is not a light stretch, it is a hard skating, pushing your self so that yoru blood is flowing and heart pumping. Your first shift shouldn't be the one where you break your first sweat. It should be after the first minute of the warmup.
but now for the good part: Remember at the end of the first period against Nottingham C? we were up. End of first period against Cardiff? it was draw. At the nationals the games will most likely be only 20min. So that will work to our advantage.
Feel free to drop me a mail if you want to discuss anything in the coming days.
See you next week.
David