Still Ice on the pond for a few more weeks

It’s been a tough season, but it’s been a pretty good season too. The team is young, and has no second line – yet they played hard right to the end of each game. Grant it they didn’t have a lot of energy for the second half of our first couple of games this year, but now they skate strong through all three periods. No player can say that they didn’t get enough ice time, in fact most got too much. We also had a young kid new to goal tending slowly evolve into a darn good goalie. Some of his multitude of saves look like some pretty slick NHL moments. This has defiantly been the smallest team I have ever coached in this century, or even in the previous. I got to coach my middle and youngest son together on the same team. That of course added a few more grey hairs under my cap, but it was worth it just the same. I also got to coach some new players this year along with some great players from last season. I watched weak skaters become strong skaters, and good players become great, although they may not yet realize just how good they did get this season. We lost a few players along the way for various reasons, but the few that hung in there did very well. They never gave up, and they never quit trying. We went up against some pretty big teams, it wasn’t really my initial plan for the season, but it seamed to work out that way. Playing a short benched U16 team against some deep bench U19 Midgets might not be something I would recommend to too many other teams, but it was a huge learning experience for everyone involved. Imagine varsity against freshmen. That was a close approximation of the challenge we had this season. We gave some of these teams a good run, and I wonder how the team would do next year at the same level only a year older across the board. I do somehow always wind up getting some of the greatest young hockey players on my teams. This year was no exception. We still have some more ice to chew up before the end of the regular season. Spring thaw isn’t here yet.