One Big Game!

This past weekend we faced off against Gustavus for a couple big MIAC regular-season games.  Due to SCSU women’s games we had to play our home game on Thursday evening.  We then had a day off on Friday before heading down to Gustavus for the second game on Saturday. 

We were able to win on Thursday night at the National Hockey Center 3-1, while outshooting Gustavus, 38-19.  The guys played a good game and put together 60 minutes of hockey.  We had some time to look at video on Friday and we felt we had some things that we could still improve on and we were feeling confident moving into the game on Saturday.

We went into the game on Saturday with confidence, but at the same time we knew that we were going into a rink that is very difficult to play in and that we needed to play hard in order to get the win.  The guys played hard, but we had a couple timely mistakes that ended the game in a 2-2 tie.  We then went into our first shootout of the year and ended up losing in the shootout, 1-0.  It was not the result that we wanted, but we know that we are not yet playing our best and that we have to start picking things up if we want to win more consistently.

Looking forward to this weekend, we have one game against St. Scholastica on Saturday in Duluth.  This will be a tough non-conference game on the road and we will need to put together a full 60 minutes of hockey to come away with the win.  Even though this is a non-conference game, it is very important for our team to have some success moving into our long Christmas break.  Last year, we finished the first half of the season with the same game and we were in a very similar situation both mentally and in how the team was playing at the time.  The game last year was at home, but we were able to win 7-1 against a tough Scholastica team.  That game sent us into the break feeling good about our team and it showed in the second half of the year with how the team came together and played some great hockey.  We need to play well this Saturday in Duluth in order to give us that confidence once again.

We have one game between now and January 5th and this is always an interesting time of year regarding how to manage the team and the time off.  We need the game this weekend to continue to show improvement in how we play and a commitment to what it takes to win hockey games.

Thanks again for all your support and I will send out one more blog next week before the Christmas break.  Have a great weekend and I hope to see you at a Johnnie game soon.

Go Johnnies!