Sunday was the big day, our first regular season game! As they usually schedule it every season, we played the other Midget B team from our association.
I'd asked the kids to get to the rink an hour before the game so I could give them their jersey and have a little team meeting maybe 45 minutes before the game, leaving them 30 minutes to get ready. I was kinda freaking out all day, overly nervous. I'm a usually pretty self-confident kinda guy and I teach karate in front of classes all the time but for some reason, the idea of meeting a bunch of 15-17 year olds that I would try to coach had something that stressed me out. How would they see me, the outsider they didn't know anything about who would coach them for the upcoming season?
First contact was ok, kinda shy to be honest. On both sides, heh.
When you get to the Midget age category, you are kinda dealing with kids who have got to be playing the sport because they should actually like playing it. As far as I could tell it wasn't the case for all of Andrew's teammates las season. I mean, Andrew just loves a day that has some hockey in it. On such a day, we see him giggle like a little kid, really and it would frustrate him to no end last year when he'd come back home after a game and there had been 3, 4 or 5 guys who just didn't care. You'd wonder why they actually signed up to play...
Going into this team meeting, one thing was certain for me, I was gonna ask them if any of them was forced to play hockey by daddy or mommy. Seemed pretty straightforward, no? And I think it worked. I want them to actually buy into the idea of coming to play, have fun but work hard, despite your abilities. I mean, I get it that it's Midget B and there is no lower level below it. None of these guys will make it to the NHL, that's a given, but this shouldn't mean they can play lazily and not backcheck for example. I wanted this to be crystal clear and will hammer down that point all season long.
Second point I made sure was understood was that I wanted us to have fun as a team but be serious about it, especially about guys keepeing their cool toward the end of games. That's one big difference we'd seen in Andrew's first two season in Midget compared to his one season as a Bantam, it was that games tented to derail more as the kids get older. I made sure to tell them that I would not accept that. On of my forwards asked me if it was ok to drop the gloves. I had to ask him to repeat his question. I didn't know if he was serious or not but I knew he would be one of my two best forwards. I told him not to look for trouble...
Third point I told them was that for me, it was important that they play as a team. I'd seen it too often last year that as soon as the team would drop behind by maybe a couple goals, every kid worked hard but they each wanted to go and score a goal by themselves. Passing would then disappear and we just sink more and more and get frustrated. I told them each player has a responsability depending what position they played. Forwards had to score goal, defenders to stop the other team from scoring. On top of that, I was expecting forwards to backcheck and come back to help.
Finally, I brushed off on practice sessions telling them that I knew many of them had jobs and would sometimes miss a practice here or there but I wanted them ro rwll me when they'd miss a practice. Communication would be key. I added that I wanted our practices to be fun and promised they'd touch pucks a lot and would get to shoot on goal quite a bit.
I found it kinda hard to get a read on the kids. Few spoke and nobody was really all RAH RAH RAH, if you know what I mean.
Our first game was next...
FM