To feed off of last week’s blog, the boys are smiling again, we took care of the task at hand (two wins against Bethel), and we found our way out of the scoring drought (scoring 5 goals in each game). We needed to have some offensive success and we accomplished that with four-point weekends by freshmen Brady Heppner and freshmen Cole Souto, and sophomore Sean Lang. The highlight of the weekend was a shorthanded, game-winning goal by Brady Heppner (see attached video). He has scored a couple big game-winning goals this year and we are looking for him to continue coming up big for this team.
Now we have to once again focus on the task at hand and that is a huge weekend series against St. Thomas. We can’t look to the past or any further into the future than this Friday night. This is not a weekend where I have to manufacture enthusiasm and motivation. The guys know what is at stake and they know the importance of these games. It is amazing how close we always play St. Thomas. Last year we played them four times, and all four games went into overtime, and three of those games were decided in a shootout. The biggest of those four games ended with an overtime victory for SJU in the semi-finals of the MIAC Playoffs.
We are not planning to change anything up for this weekend and we are planning to build on the success that we had against Bethel. If there is anything that we need to improve upon going into the weekend it would be playing better defensively. This comes with better communication in the defensive zone, while trusting teammates to do their jobs and not running around. I would also like to have an opportunity to improve one more thing and that’s playing better with a lead in the third period. I still feel that we tend to try to do things that are unnecessary with the lead and we also tend to take some undisciplined penalties in the third. These things can’t happen against the skilled teams we have left on our schedule.
Finally, I am excited about our schedule the rest of the season. We play the three top teams in the MIAC standings (St. Thomas, Saint Mary’s, Augsburg). Everything we want to accomplish is right in front of us. Everything to this point is in the past and if we want to accomplish our goals we only need to focus on the next six games.
Thanks for your support by reading this blog. Now more than ever we also need your support at the games. I want to pack the rinks, home and away, with Johnnie Red! Have a great week and we hope to see you in a rink soon.
