Novice Local White Team on a Roll
The Novice LL White team is half way through their season and are off to a great start. After 7 games they have 5 wins with only 2 losses. They started the season off with a home game against Drayton. With a later start to the season our players had less experience than the Drayton team. After a tight first period Drayton opened up the scoring with 2 goals. Our players battled back to make it 2-1 going into the 3rd period. In the last frame the cyclones took it to Drayton but were not able to get the 'biscuit in the basket'. Although we lost 2-1 the coaches were very happy with the effort of our team gave for their first game many had played.
In our second game we traveled to the new Mt. Forest complex to face the Rams. The Rams were in second place at that time and our players had to get used to playing on the larger ice surface and the coaches were still shuffling the players through different positions. This proved to be a high scoring affair. The focus was to play good positional hockey in our end and work the puck out along the boards. Our wingers did an excellent job getting the puck past their pinching defence which created many break away opportunities for our team. Going into the 3rd we had a 4 goal lead. The Rams put more pressure on us and came to within 2 goals making it 7-5 for us. We added a late goal to finnish the game on to 8-5. Highlighting this game was Nathan's 6 goal performance, but this was made possible by many good breakout passes from the other forwards (Jake, Jonathan, Dustin, Braedan, and Sara). Our defence (Jacob, Emma, Aydan, Chloe) did a great job giving the Rams less breakaway's and forcing them to the outside portion of the rink. Lastly, Seth made some timely save's in net, never giving up the lead to their team.
Our third game was at home against Tiverton. We called up Josh Jacklin and Nicholas Peroski from the JD team and were missing our 6 goal scorer from the previous game. The game was high paced and back and forth. Tiverton scored late in the 3rd period to make the score 3-2, which is how it finished. Again, our players did a good job trying to improve their positional play. Seth did steal the game for us making save after save on breakaway attempts.
The fourth game was a home game against one of the Walkerton teams. The game started out slowly but we eventually wore down the other team and began to pull ahead. The players really were expanding on their positional play and were learning the importance of playing short shifts which allowed them to have more energy than the other team and out skate them later in the game. The highlight of this game was the 4 goal performance by Dustin.
The fifth game was at home against the Minto LL team. The first period had no scoring. Half way into the game Minto broke the scoring open. At this point either Minto poured it on or we gave up. Minto poured 3 goals into the net in the 2nd period and 4 more in the third. We did have opportunities but their goalie came up with some big saves and when we had breakaway's, their speedy defence caught us from behind to take the scoring chance away. From every loss you can learn something. I learned we can't get down on ourselves if we fall behind. Overall it was a good game, but we could do better.
The sixth game was in Walkerton again. We started out slowly falling behind 0-2 over 7 minutes into the first period. Seth didn't stand much of a chance on the first goal because we accidently slid into him knocking him on his back. The second goal they had caught him by surprise with a weaker shot coming from the corner. All of a sudden we woke up and scored 3 goals in the period of just 30 seconds ! Jake assisted the first 2 goals with nice passed out from the corner to help Nathan and Sara with goals. The 3rd goal Dustin set up Jonathan infront where he slammed the puck in. Leading 3-2 there was no scoring until midway through the 3rd period when Jake had his 3rd assist helping Dustin find the back of the net. I think the team learned to not give up after falling behind. The defence (Chloe, Emma, Aydan, Jacob) did a great job shutting the other team down and Seth stood solid after their first period goals.
The seventh game was back in Walkerton again. This team we previously beat 6-2. The first period was back and forth, very even with few scoring opportunities for either team. It wasn't til half way through the 2nd period when Sara took a pass from Nathan for her 2nd goal of the season. Two minutes later Emma and Dustin set up Jonathan giving us a 2-0 lead going into the 3rd period. Thirty seconds into the 3rd period Dustin had an unassisted goal then 4 minutes later Nathan scored with assists going to Braeden and Jake. Jacob added another unassisted goal before Nathan had his second of the game with helpers coming from Ayden and Chloe.
Seth had his best game of the year and earned the shut out. He does need to say thanks to the players infront of them. Overall they did everything right. They kept their shifts short. The forwards backchecked breaking up some scoring chances. And the defence cleared the puck out from the front of the net after Seth stopped their many break away attempts. The one great thing to see was that
ALL 10 skaters were on the score sheet. This means they are passing and playing like a real team.
Next we travel to Harriston for the Minto tournament on January 10th. We look forward to continue having fun and playing hard in the 2nd half of the season. GO CYCLONES
Coach Paul
