Patrick Sexton is the co-captain of the Penticton Vees, writing about topics on and off the ice for the Western News.
Losing is always frustrating. But losing a game where you get shut out is probably the most frustrating game in all of hockey.
Everybody is doing their best to try and help the team score but nobody can find the right touch to put the puck in the back of the net. That was the mutual feeling around the team after Saturday’s loss. But the best part about junior hockey is that it’s a 58-game season, not just one game, so we take the positives from the weekend and we build on the negatives going into this week of practice.
Monday was an off day on the ice, but the boys watched video to see what we did well on the weekend and what we need to work on; once video sessions were done we hit the gym hard for a lower body workout. With Monday out of the way, we got back to work on the ice the rest of the week.
Coaches structured practice plans where we could work on the things we didn’t do as well last weekend as well as what we need to be doing this weekend.
With two big divisional games, and one of the games being our home opener versus Salmon Arm, we forget about what happened Saturday night and shift our focus to this weekend’s games. Over the course of the week, we worked on corner battles, defencemen boxing out forwards, forwards battling for position in front of the net, our forcheck, our backcheck, our neutral zone systems as well as our penalty kill and our powerplay.
With Friday’s game almost here, we start to prepare specifically for Salmon Arm. Coaches prepare us by breaking down their tendencies and by planning out what we need to do to counter any specific systems plays and tendencies they may have.