[FrogMan]

ok, time to put some name tags on those nameless players... I'll go position by position, starting from our nets and going up to the forward spots. Keep in mind that some of those player reports will be sometimes simply my opinion of how I see the player playing for us more than a factual assessment of the talent of the player. I've only paid good attention to them with the eye of a coach for a couple of intrasquad games, one real game and one practice in which many were missing.
Let's get this going, shall we?

Goalie

Andrew G, 3rd year Midget, played Midget B in 2013-14, preseason rating: 2
Andrew is my son and will be the anchor of our defense. At the age of 17, this is only his fourth season playing hockey and I'm simply amazed at how much he has progressed over the last three seasons. He's very solid on shots from a distance, rarely giving up a bad goal on such challenges and is also pretty good on shootouts and breakaways. His main weekness might be his anticipation for lateral movement when a pass comes from the corner up to the slot (in between the two defensive face off circles) or from one side to the other, right accross the defensive zone but that's something that is very tough for most goalies to deal with. He regularly faced 35+ shots per game last season behind a pretty weak defensive line. He even had a couple games of 50 shots, one of them going up to 55 shots. He's a cool and mellow kid but has been getting a bit more vocal with his defenders, letting them know if an opposing forward is left alone on the periphery. Him only being in his fourth year of playing hockey, he still loves the game so frigging much, it's just a joy to watch. A game with hockey in it, be it a game or even simply a practice, is like Christmas every time for him. This year will be time consuming for me but I'm so happy to share this with him... There was no preseason rating for the goalies in the file they gave me, maybe because it was set that both goalies would simply be on different teams. After comparing their standards to rate a player a 1 which was usually a very dominant player or a player who had just been cut from the Midget A camp and seeing how Andrew was never invited to try out for the A, I gave him a rating of 2 for team average rating purposes...


Defenders

Charles-William (C.W.) B, 3rd year Midget, played Midget A in 2013-14, preseason rating: 1
I will refer to him as C.W. from now on. He comes to our team as part of the last blockbuster deal. My first impression of C.W. when I first saw him in the first intrasquad match my eyes of a coach was "holy crap, that kid can play!". He's a beast. I thinks that impression was also driven by the fact that they had rated him a 2 on the first list they gave me. I thought there's no way this guy is a 2 compared to the other 2 and the 1's... Tall and big with great skating skills and good hands. His size is nice to move people around but checking isn't allowed at the A and B level so it's not as big a factor as one would think, but it will still help him win battles in the corners. His passes are crisp and more often than not, right on target. He's shown a tendency to go forward quite a bit but not in a uncontrolled manner. I will work with that and make it known to others that I expect someone to stay behind if he goes forward, as long as he remembers that once the push is done, his number one priority is defense. Looking at his stats from last year, I saw he had only played 10 games out of 24 in the season and I learned he had an history of concussions. One I think from playing football and another from a bad fall in hockey. There's no checking at our level so he should be ok, and I will certainly be but that could become a concern...

Charles F, 1st year Midget, played Bantam A in 2013-14, preseason rating: 2
Charles is tall and kinda lanky and is more of a stay at home defender. He's got good basics for a defender, decent skating a good hands but will have to grow into playing with midget level boys. It's interesting but I was not impressed by him the first time I saw him, even downgrading him to below 2 in my notes but then, the second game he played much better and has been quite ok since then. He looks like a fairly quiet kid that will be fun to coach. this will apply to many other kids but him coming from Bantam A is a positive. There is a good difference in attitude between kids playing at the A level and kids playing at the B level. Kids at the A level know there is a level below to which they could be relegated so they often work harder in practices.

Vincent C, 2nd year Midget, played Midget B in 2013-14, preseason rating: 3
Vince played with Andrew last season and was part of that pretty bad defense I talked about. He's a very good kid but, similar to Andrew, has not been playing hockey for very long. Because of this, his game is lacking in several places. He's not very fast on his skates and while he looks strong and has a good build, he often ends up shooting or passing from the tip of his stick blade thus making some sloppy passes that can easily cut short by opposing forwards. He did improve between the start dna the end of last season though so we will keep working with him and try to make him better. He's definitely the weakest link in our defense but the difference from last season is that we had a couple more like him, not this season...

Christophe C, 1st year Midget, played Bantam A in 2013-14, preseason rating: 2+/1.5
Chris was ranked as a 2+ on the list they gave me and I thought this was about right. He played Bantam A last season and is probably a bit better than most players rated at 2 but not quite there with players rated at 1. For average purposes, I gave him a 1.5. He's not our worst defender by a long shot but he's also a forward converted to defense. He offered to play defense at the start of the second intrasquad game we had and that was quite ok by me since there were only 6 defenders on the list of players for the two teams. He's overall a pretty solid player with good hockey basics, good skating, good hands with the puck although not a super strong shot but a pretty accurate passer, that is when he actually passes the puck... He's shown the tendency to keep the puck to himself and try to get it from our end to the other end. While it's nice from time to time, I will want him to understand that every time he turns the puck over in the neutral zone, it's usually Andrew who will have to save his @ss at the back... He looks like a nice kid but I've heard odd stuff about him, and his dad who was the Bantam A coach last season but was kinda pushed out of the way. When one of my assistant was rounding out the parents for our meeting after the game, he told him he would come "if he felt like it". Err, what? oookay. I'm sure he'll be a good player for us though and we could use him up front at some point, depending on how the offense performs, or maybe to simply shake things up a bit...

For now, I'm thinking of playing C.W. with Vince and Charles with Chris. It was pretty much that way in game #1 with Vince playing with the other defender that switched team. That other defender wasn't as impressive physicaly and less of a threat offensively so there's a bit of concern for when C.W. will push forward but we gotta try something at some point...

FM