That first game went well, maybe a bit too well. I knew going into the game that we probably had a better lineup than the other side, and it all started with the goalies. As I said before their goalie is a young girl, a first year Midget. She's not big and while she's got the right attitude, she's not up to Midget level yet, might never be. She looks afraid of the puck at times, tilting her head sideways a little when a big shot comes up. By comparison, Andrew is a frigging plywood board compared to her in the sense that he never wavers when a shot comes.
I will present our full lineup later on so you'll have names to know who's who but for now let's say that after the last roster changes, we ended up with the best two forwards. I just didn't know how dominant they'd end up being. We ended up winning the game 11-3 with 2:05 still to play in the game. They stop the game when there's an 8 goal differential.
That score makes it look worse than how it really happened. It was 4-2 after the first period with a couple gifted goals for us. Our first goal was a prime example of a gifted goal as it came on a long shot from an angle from arguably one of our worst player. On paper, he's our worst rated player (our only player rated 4) although I thought he played better than that rating.
They scored to start the second period to make it 4-3 and a couple players conceded to me that we were not really dominating them. We then got a power play in which we scored to make it 5-3, then scored again a few minutes later to make it 6-3 and they just collapsed and stopped playing. From there I told our guys to work on passing and not try to score at all cost but even then, the other side was offering little opposition.
I'm not a big hockey strategist. I didn't take this "job" to revolutionize how they'll play the game but mostly to make sure they'd have a season. There are some little things I can point out as I played some hockey in my youth but there are people far better than me to actually coach a hockey team. That kind of game was maybe perfect to get my feet wet as there was nothing to actually say.
The two top forwards combined for 5 of the 11 goals, one of them getting a hat trick as well as 3 assists while the other scored a couple goals. They had a hand on 8 of our 11 goals...
Honestly, while I was impressed with how these two played, I was also pleased with how my other guys played. Passes were crisper than I remembered them being last season. I thought maybe it was because I was at ice level but my wife told me the same from her point of view up the stands. The kids worked hard and the effort was there, more than it had been for most of last season. I saw backcheck efforts that resulted in broken up plays that last year would have resulted in a two against none in front of Andrew. I liked that. Sure, it's only one game but maybe my message could go through...
I met with the parents right after the game and told them the exact same points I'd told their kids.
I was looking for people to help me out too. I had two dads who offered their help as assistant before the game. One of them was that policeman I'd told about before and it's clear he will only be available every other weekend. The other is the dad of a first year Midget who was an assistant on his son's team last year.
I still needed a manager for the team. Purpose of a manager is to handle the paperwork around tournament registrations, collecting money from parents when needed, that sort of thing. My wife was ready to chip in and do it if I couldn't find anybody but I wanted to get this work out of the house because I knew if my wife didn't time to do it, I'd have to work on it and I really wanted to delegate it to someone else. During the meeting, despite explaining that I have my hands full with a full time job during the day and a dojo to run in the evening and that I was coaching just so their kids (and mine of course) could have a good hockey season, I got nobody stepping forward. As I was gathering my papers and was about to leave, one mom came to me, telling me she would like to help but had no clue what it implied. I breathed a sigh of relief. We got her in touch with the mom of another player who'd done the managerial position and she was all set.
Then the drama kinda started, not with my kids mind you... But that's for another time...
FM