Who Are You

Tell me who are you............ I know who you are...... You are a hockey player. Are you a good player? – yes. Can you get better? – yes. Will you get better? – yes......if you want to. Confidence is a huge factor on the ice, but so is confidence in your teammate. I saw that in the first two periods during today's game, I saw the team execute the positioning and team play that we worked on all week. It was great to see, but at the end of the second period things started to go south. We were out shooting the other team, and had them on the boards. Could we hang onto the lead? Apparently not. Things started falling apart as soon as the play got more physical. We got off our game plan and went back to making the same mistakes that have worked against us all season. As soon as we let up on the fore checking we lost our advantage. Our opponent came back fast and strong. As soon as we started to back off we lost. To some extent we gave up when the other team evened the score. Yes there was some hacking at us, but even with that we should have kept the pressure on the puck. I believe we were tired. When you are tired old habits start to creep back into your game. On the positive side, the first half of the game was very good. We need to capitalize on this and keep moving forward. You should all be very proud of the way you played the first two periods. We still have a lot of work to do, but I have seen that this team can do great things when you give your all. Never give up regardless of the odds. We will continue to play some tough teams in this league, and we will continue to work our way up this hill...one step at a time. In the end you will know who you are. You are good hockey players. You are a good team. By the way, I went home and had some spaghetti. I did enjoy watching the other coach getting frustrated when we were ahead. By the way he was yelling at his players I don't think he expected us to play like that. Some coaches might like to scream at their players, but that's not my style. If you play well you know it. If you don't play well you know you'll play better the next time. I know you are trying, and I see improvement. That's what hockey is really all about when you get right down to it. Do your best, work hard, play well and enjoy the game. You might just have some fun along the way.