This isn't about my kids, because I don't have any, but I coach 13-15 year olds in hockey, and tonight we won our 2nd game of the season in what was one of the best hockey games I've ever been involved in.
Our team is pretty bad. Most of our kids don't skate very well, and are for the most part smaller than the rest of the league (our best skater is only 5'0"). We are currently 2-6 on the season, in last place. Our only saving grace is that we have the best goalie in the league.
I've been trying to preach to the kids the importance of positional hockey, particularly to the wingers who always venture too deep into our zone so we can never get the puck out. I told our defence to just keep them out of the middle of the ice, as none of these players shoot well enough to beat our goalie from the outside. I told them that if they can learn to play their positions, we will be much more successful. As you can imagine, it's a lot tougher than it sounds with kids that age!
Tonight, the team finally got the message and we played great positional hockey. We were able to chip the puck by defenders and get some odd man rushes. We went up 1-0 early with a fluky goal from the blue line. Tied 1-1 after 1 (we only play 2 periods), we went up 2-1 with about 12 minutes to go in the 2nd after furious pressure in their end where we had about 11 shots on goal, finally banging home a loose puck. With about 5 minutes left, the other team scored the tying goal on a seeing eye puck that bounced off like 8 legs in front. I brought the guys over and I told them that they were doing such a great job of playing their positions and keeping the shooters to the outside. All we had to do was keep doing that and we would find a way to win this game. With about 2 minutes left, a puck bounced out to one of our defenders, luckily the guy with the best shot on our team, and he was able to fire it through a maze of legs and sneak it under the goalie's pad for the go ahead goal. We were able to hang on for the hard fought 3-2 win.
It's been a tough year for our team and all I can really do as a coach is just try to keep them having fun, and I thought the best way to do that was to teach them the right way to play hockey and forget about everything else. I was really proud of the way they played and really happy for them that they were able to pull out this win against the 2nd place team (7-1). It's too hard to describe why this game was so exciting. It's one of those things that you had to be there for.
Anyways, I just wanted to share that story.
