Team Dinner at Space Aliens

I didn't have a very good day on the ice. We did mostly penalty kill and power play work, and I was on the penalty kill. I got scored on quite a bit, but I will work on it. I need to read the play better and just get my stick into passing lanes. After practice, I went to Healthways, our off-ice training center, and did an agility workout with the trainer there. He has us on this new eating plan where we have to eat 6 small meals a day and write down everything we eat. Not a big deal for me because I'm constantly eating, but it will be interesting to be able to see everything I eat in a week. Coach told us after practice that it is not acceptable that we get outworked this weekend, like we did in Aberdeen last weekend. We need to be a much harder working team and start creating an identity for ourselves.

Tonight, we had a team dinner at Space Aliens, a restaurant chain that started here in Bismarck. It's a pretty wild place with wacky space paintings and decorations all over. The food is OK. We had a nice team gathering, though, and it was paid for by our owner, which was nice. After dinner, our owner talked to us about his expectations for us this season. Expectations are high as the Bobcats are defending national champs. He stressed that we are not national champs, last year's team gets that recognition, although he does think we have the potential and talent to become national champs again if we work hard and play gritty Bobcat hockey. He talked about the importance of having a very supportive community like Bismarck behind us, and he talked about our first-class off ice program that we have available at Healthways. He told us that the Bobcats provide the means for you to succeed, but they don't hand a Division I scholarship to anyone. The work has to be done by the players, and anyone who doesn't work hard or show the coaches that they want to be a Bobcat, will probably be gone sooner than later. It was an interesting talk, there were good things said that I think the team needed to hear. I know I've shown that I'm willing to work hard and that I have a lot of potential, but potential really isn't anything. I just need to keep working hard and making an impression and I think my time will come.