A Little Slice of Humble Pie

Fresno almost brought out the brooms on us this weekend.  We almost got swept in our 3 game series in Fresno.  On Saturday night we lost again 4-1.  The game was much closer than the score indicates; it was a hard fought battle, but they ended up capitalizing on our mistakes and we couldn't find the back of the net.  Sunday morning, though, we were determined to come out with a win.  No way were we going to drive all the way to Fresno and go home without a win.  After the game on Saturday night, our coaches decided to have individual meetings with all the players to try and get a fire going.  There are some kids on our team who--no matter what--play with no emotion.  That's not a good thing in the sport of hockey.  You have to be emotional to play hockey.  You have to play this game with an edge.  That's something I've learned.  In my meeting, the coaches told me they think I'm a different player ever since I decided to drop the gloves.  They think I'm playing much more confidently and growing as a leader.  But they still want me to be more vocal in the locker room.  Our assistant coach went so far as to say that he thought in the 2nd period of the game on Saturday night, I played the best he's ever seen me play.  I felt good, but I really didn't feel like that was the best I've ever played.  I was playing very physically, though.  No one could get into our zone if they decided to come down my side of the blue line.

After the game on Saturday, our backs were against the wall.  I've never been in that situation before where you need to get a win or be completely embarrassed in a 3 game sweep.  It was pretty intense.  We all knew what we had to do, though.  We made a commitment as a team to work to exhaustion every shift and to be fired up emotionally throughout the entire game.  It worked.  We came out flying.  Unfortunately, we got homered a little bit with the officiating, but that'll happen on the road.  It's a good sign that we fought through adversity together and killed off most of our penalties.  It seemed like we were killing penalties the whole game.  It was a back and forth battle.  We were up 2-0, then suddenly down 3-2.  It looked like we were going to lose again.  I scored our third goal to tie it up in the 3rd period from the slot, and then another one of our assistant captains scored about 3 minutes later to put us up for good.

I think I played a helluva weekend of hockey.  I played 3 games all out.  I left nothing in the tank every game.  Our equipment manager told me he thinks I played 35-40 minutes in all 3 games, and that's a lot of ice time.  I'm proud of the way I played and the way I led this team even when things weren't looking so good for us this weekend.  We desperately needed a win on Sunday and found a way to get it done.  It would have been nice to do better against our archrivals, but considering the level of opponent we've played all season up to this point, I think we did well.  It will be good for us in the long run to know that we're not the best team out there right now, that we still have a lot of work to do if we want to do something special this season.  This weekend was an eye-opener for a lot of our young guys, and it was a step forward for me.  By no means did I play a perfect weekend; I made a few mistakes that could have cost us goals, but I will learn from them and continue to get better.  I did, however, play well enough on Sunday morning to earn the game's first star.  When I heard someone tell me that in the locker room after the game, I said, "Since when does a player on the visiting team get the first star in Fresno?"  I'll take it.  But I'll also take this weekend as a lesson:  we need to get better as a team.  And we will.  I like our team's character.