It has been a couple weeks since my last blog and a lot has happened since our Hamline series. We were disappointed to drop a game against Hamline on the second night of that weekend, so we really decided to commit to working hard in practice and competing hard in practice to work our way to playing more consistently.
We followed up the hard week of practice with two of our best games of the year against St. Olaf. The first game we won 5-2 at St. Olaf and out-shot them 49-13. The second night we won 4-0 at home, with Andrew Lindgren getting his first shutout of the year. We were consistent in these games and worked hard both nights.
We followed those games up with another hard week of practice to keep pushing the importance of our compete level and unfortunately did not have the same result on the weekend. We played one of our worst games of the year against Concordia-Wisconsin and lost 3-2, while getting out-shot, 32-25. We really lacked an edge in this game and played the game soft way too often. We had a very tough talk that night after the game about our inconsistency and how we needed to be more repeatable. We had a better performance against #14 ranked Marian the following day and ended the game in a 1-1 tie.
With all that said, it brings me to the title of this blog and that is “Becoming Repeatable.” I heard a great speech a couple years back from Jeff Blashill, head coach of the Detroit Red Wings, where he discussed the importance of being repeatable in the NHL. He discussed that everyone is going to make mistakes, but when a coach brings up something that needs to change in your game, you need to be able to fix it. He then went on to discuss that once you fix it the best players are able to take that improvement and make it repeatable. They do not regress to the way they played before the correction. In my opinion, we need to become more repeatable as a team in order to win more consistently.
We need to out work, out compete and out hit the teams we play against. This is what will make us a championship team. Right now, we are not playing like a championship team, but it is my job to get this team to play to that level. I know we have the guys in the locker room to get that done, but we need to get them all playing more repeatable to make it happen.
This weekend we have MIAC opponent, Saint Mary’s, coming to town for a huge series. This is a weekend that we need to be ready, both mentally and physically. This is a must-sweep weekend if we want to win the MIAC regular-season title. With that said it all starts Friday night and we can’t worry about Saturday untill we get that first win. Saint Mary’s is going to come in and work hard. They took St. Thomas to overtime earlier in the year and have lost one-goal games to some of the best teams in the country. This is going to be a great test.
Finally, I wanted to let all the alumni know that our annual alumni game will take place this Saturday afternoon from 11-12:30 at the National Hockey Center prior to our game against Saint Mary’s at 2p.m.. If you are interested in coming to this and skating, please e-mail me at dschueller@csbsju.edu or Andrew Commers at Andrew.Commers@ngkf.com. I hope to see some of you there.
Thanks for following Johnnie Hockey and Go Johnnies!
Doug Schueller
