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Hi Everyone!
Last weekend was rather tough for SR. We played two MFL games, both against SA and one 3rd fl. game, also against SA. There have already been many summaries about the games so I will only go through some main points from the weekend.
On Friday, as you know, we lost against SA 2-7. We play a good first period and an OK third period, but yet again we fail in the second period. As I have mentioned we struggle with our defensive play. Nevertheless we should all keep in mind that defensive failure does not only occur in the defensive zone. Actually, in our case most of the defensive mistakes are made when we are the offensive team. This might sound confusing, but the fact is that our thoughtless and at times inactive offensive play is the underlying problem to why we fail to keep our defense together. With inactivity I mean that many of our offensive attacks are performed mainly by one actor, the man with the puck. When this player fails to either enter the zone or to create an offensive play, 2 other forwards and usually at least one defenseman are caught in the situation with inactive feet, leading to inadequate reaction to the transaction from offense to defense. This leads furthermore to extremely dangerous counter attacks by the opposing team. It is these counter attacks that took away 6 points from us this weekend. In my opinion, we gave the points away too cheap, way too cheap.
How do we fix this? There is no easy, quick fix to this. To be able to build a more coordinated defense every single player has to look in the mirror and ask; who am I playing for? The team or for myself. When every single player realizes that the answer should be the team, then we can take the next step. What is the system we are playing, what are we trying to do and what do we want to avoid? Why do we want to avoid this and how do we do in order to achieve this? When you know these answers the only thing is to follow it and actually do as we say, every single time, all three periods.
I am still positive to the team and that we will grow as a team day by day, practice by practice. A main word is discipline. Without that we can and will not achieve the things we have been working for. We are playing extremely well at times, moving the puck, going into 1 on 1 situations with great attitude, supporting each other on the ice and making creative solutions under pressure. Unfortunately our weaknesses are bigger at the moment than our strengths. When we can turn this equation around, we will be ready to fight for the championship.
SR – SA 3. Flokkur
We also played a game with our third flokkur on Saturday. The time for the game was unfortunately late and I know that many of my boys were not awake when the game started. We have had some difficulties with this age group. The main issue has been the big differences in experience and skills, making it quite hard for us to execute good practices. Some of the boys have only played for one or two seasons or have been away from hockey for a couple of years. It is never easy to come back after such a long time and of course it is even harder if you have quit playing during the most important individual development face in the ages between 10 and 14.
But I see many boys developing quickly and that is always extremely joyful for a coach. As I said we lost on Saturday, mostly due to our extremely inactive skating on the ice. Also I have to mention that SA was playing well against us and succeeded in most of the scoring opportunities. We had problems to get the pucks on the net and also our offensive attacks were mainly performed by one man shows without any kind of support from other forwards or defenseman in the line. Today we will meet Björninn in Egillshöll and I hope a more fresh and active SR team will enter the ice!
Head coach,
Richard Tähtinen
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