Well that was a tough weekend! We lost on Friday night, 2-0, at St. Olaf and lost in a shootout on Saturday night (2-2 in regulation) at home against St. Olaf. To say the least, the weekend was a huge disappointment. We were only able to score two goals on the weekend and have only scored five goals in our last four games since coming back from Christmas break.

So with that, our main focus is to improve on our offensive output this weekend. We have a short week to get ready for our game this Thursday against Bethel. We have three practice days to work on getting better chances and finishing those chances that we get. We also need to find a way to build the guys’ confidence and get them back to how we were playing before break. Before break we were averaging 3.5 goals per game.

So how do we plan to do this…

Try to get the guys smiling again and find that love for coming to the rink every day. You can see the stress pulsing though their veins. I know that this is a lot different than the Herb Brooks era of coaching, when after a weekend that we had, you would have the guys line up on the line for tough conditioning skate. Our guys don’t need to be beat down any more than they already are. We need to get them excited to compete and play the game that they love.
Drills that focus on getting to the front of the net and creating traffic for the opposing goalies. We are way to perimeter in our offensive zone right now. We need to get to the front of the net and focus on getting goals in the “dirty” areas. In times like this, you need to go to the tough areas to get a couple goals in order build confidence in what we need to do to score.
Focus on the task at hand. We can’t be looking at standings or what we need to do in the next eight games to get into the playoffs. We need to focus on this Thursday night and our big home game against Bethel. The guys need to live and play in the moment. We need to leave the last four games in the past and we need to look to the immediate future. That starts with that day’s practice and will bring us into the first shift against Bethel.

We have a huge hill to climb and the climb starts Thursday!

Speaking of fun, check out the poll question on the gojohnnies web site:

Which SJU-Hockey-themed love song are you practicing in preparation for Valentine's Day?

- "Chasing Cars" - Souto Patrol

- "Meet Valerius" - Train

- "The Reason" - Hubastank

- "Stautz With Me" - Sam Smith

- "Your Love is My Doug" - Ke$ha

Thanks again for your support of Johnnie Hockey!