I wasn't even home when I received an email from the assistant technical director of our hockey association asking me a sort of report on the game, how I thought it went and if I had any suggestions. He's one of the guys that evaluated the players and to whom I sent a list of lineups earlier in the process. He seemed to value my opinion after that first lineup suggestion.
I told him just I wrote above, that the score didn't indicate how the game went and that while we were probably stronger, the other team had stopped playing at some point, more precisely when the score got to 6-3. I added that we had scored on two power plays while succesfull stopping their only chance.
I wanted to avoid losing any players on offense so I kinda offered a switch of one of my decent defenders for their worst. That would give me the two worst defenders out of the six that were available at first. I also offered my fourth defender who in fact is a converted forward but who had done an excellent job for us on defense in the first game. That would give them a their fourth good defender while I'd have to scramble and convert another forward to defense and would leave me exposed with Andrew providing the most of my defense behind a patchwork line of defense. I thought it made at least some sense.
He didn't see it that way. He came back saying he'd only seen the first period of the game and that he thought their defense had done a decent job and that there were the same number of good scoring chances on both sides but we were leading 4-2 and looked comfortably in control. His point of view came down to the fact that no matter the strongest defenders you would put in front of that goalie, they wold usually need to outscore their opponents by much more than we would with Andrew as our goalie... He added that he thought we should give away our TWO top forwards. I knew these two were good buddies and pretty much came as a package but what came next kinda shocked me. The guy was kinda acting as the middle man, a mediator if you will, and he told me he told they should give me two average players for our two top front men. I was shocked when I read the two names he was offering me. One of them was a player rated 3 (remember that the other two were rated 1) that I had marked as "kind of lazy, not always giving his best" or in other words, not really my kind of player, and really not a scoring kind of forward. The other guy while rated at 2, was one I wanted no part with. He played with Andrew last year. He's listed as forward but is more of a defender but a very wild one, capable of good things but also often capable of crap inducing plays. Worst of all, he's only present 40 to 50% of the games and almost never there for practices. Almost the complete opposite of what I was looking for in a player...
Sigh, he wanted to strip my team bare and leave me asking Andrew to score goals after making the save!!!
I replied to him that a recreative Midget team like ours need at least one player capable of creating some sparkle up front. By stripping us of both these players while giving us almost nothing, we'd end up never getting out of our defensive zone and I was unwilling to put Andrew through this kind of season again.
When you are dealing with this kind of recreative level where dads are coaching and buddies are asking to play together, you get tied up pretty quick. One of their forward scored the 3 goals against us in that game. In the first lineups I had put together, he was on my side but ended up being switched by the assistant technical director because he said his brother would help their coaches with practices. During the game, the coach on the other side had 3 assistants but none of the them was the brother of that player so I tried a counter. Okay, I could give my top two players but would have to get their top for that samed kinda lazy rated 3 forward, but not the one who kept missing games and practices... I sent that reply on Monday around 3 pm.
The evening passed, then the morning on Tuesday and I sent an email around lunch Tuesday asking what was up since I'd not heard anything and we had a team practice that evening and a game coming up this Saturday.
I got a reply soon after that it had taken some time because he was thinking about my last comment. He replied that the brother of that forward was indeed involved with the team and would in fact put together and direct their practices. Sigh... He added he still tought BOTH top forwards had to change team. He offered me something different. Their other top forward, while not as dominant, was another forward rated as a 1 and had played all of the season in Midget A last year. I knew the kid since he had played with Andrew in his first year of hockey in the Bantam category. He would not give me really a sure thing as a firepower up front but it was much better. I could certainly use him as an achor in the middle of our offense and I knew he was a hard worker and a good kid. Thing was, he was anchored to their best defender since they both came to games together, the defender providing the ride to the forward. You see the puzzle there? Want this player but oh know, he comes with this one and this one cannot go. ARRRGGG!!!
The assistant technical director told me he'd send me both the forward and their top defender as a package as well as that other forward (not the absent one) for my top two forwards as well as my top defender. My mind went into overdrive, lots of things to think about there...
Remember that blockbuster deal that had happened when we set the teams up? Well, we were reversing it. I was coming out of it short of one 1 rated forward but otherwise not too bad. Given who was left on the other side, or maybe I should, who was left that I was even interested on coaching, that was probably as good as it would get so I approved the deal.
When the dust had settled and I averaged all the preseason ratings of my players (as given by evaluators of the association) I was coming up with 2.23 while the other side was coming up with 2.25. Remember 1 is good, 4 is bad. You want a rating as low as possible. Both teams were probably, on paper at least, as close to one another as they could be. With all the firepower they have up front, this meant they also had some lower rated players to deal with while we were more even from top to bottom.
Comparing the two defenders that just switched side, I'd say the one leaving us was more of a stay at home defender while the one coming to us was more a, I wouldn't say wild, but more of an offensive minded defender. He's much bigger and stronger than the one leaving us and I actually liked him more than the one leaving us during the first few pratices I'd seen. I thought he could actually help us clear the puck out of our defensive zone.
In between all these email exchanges, I got to see what our team would look like without these two top forward BUT also before the two new guys joined us as we had a practice on Tuesday evening. Nine kids showed up for this half ice practice with both top forward missing. I had the rest of them work mostly on individual abilities, i.e. passing in movement, shooting, skating. Smoe of the things I saw didn't encourage me much...
The whole move makes me nervous but I don't think I had a choice. I talked to my new kids yesterday and all three sounded happy to join me and our team. I try to tell myself we have a much more stable defensive four that we had last year so at least we'll be able to defend better and restart the offense from the back, something which was lacking last season and sometimes resulted in numerous shots on Andrew because we just couldn't touch the puck in a while. I know this new defender will cut many of those loose puck in the middle. I hope I can get my kids to buy into the whole 100% effort, pass and do not try to do everything by yourself and backcheck message. If not, we might be in for a long season...
But then again, the players we give up are two good scorers but also two wild fellas. The defender was a good kids though, and the three players we are getting are good kids. That opinion was reinforced after talking to them on the phone. As a whole, I like the look of our team, hopefully it'll work itself all right.
Next game is this Saturday and it will not be easy. Not so much because of the opponent we face, Alliés-2, since I know nothing other than the fact that they beat Alliés-1 5-3 last Sunday, but more because that top forward we just got also told me on the phone that he had already told his other coach that he is out of town this weekend. And another of our decent forward is also out of town. It's just too early in the season for me to have been able to rate and sign an affiliate (a Bantam player that could come play with us when players are missing, Bantam A players are allowed to play for Midget B teams are affiliates) so we'll have to do with what we have. Dear god, I'm becoming a coach, I'm thinking about how I could shuffle my lines to make up for missing players. It's fun now though. Wasn't so much during the fight to keep them from stripping my team.
FM