Clean Sweep

We completed a three game sweep of the Cheyenne Stampede this weekend in McCall.  It was a close series for the most part.  The Stampede really kept things close in the first two games.  No matter how much offense we created, they hung around and kept things interesting.  But we won the first night 4-0 (first shutout of the year,) and the second night 3-1, and on Sunday afternoon we won 10-2.  It was a fun weekend.  I love being up in McCall because it reminds me so much of being back in Colorado, and it's just a great atmosphere up there.  You can tell the town really livens up when the Junior Steelheads come to town.  We had our Pink in the Rink event this weekend, so we wore pink laces, taped our sticks with pink tape, and wore pink armbands that were auctioned off with proceeds going to benefit breast cancer.  There were great crowds for every game, and I had a lot of fun!

I played pretty solid in all the games, but I still have things I need to work on.  I need to work on making better decisions when under pressure.  Quite often, I just throw the puck away when I get pressured, and I could make a simple board pass to our forwards.  Throwing the puck out of the zone is never a bad play, but my coach wants me to work on making better plays and seeing the ice better.  I also need to work on my execution on the power play.  I didn't have a very good weekend on the power play and neither did our team as a whole, but I need to focus on making smarter decisions with the puck on the blue line in the next week.  We need to execute our power play a lot better because we're going to end up playing teams with good penalty kills later on in the season, so it will be important for us to capitalize when we have the man advantage.  Offensively, I had a bad weekend (0 points) but I didn't need to put up points.  Our forwards handled that.  And, more importantly, I wasn't on the ice for any of their goals all weekend.  I think I might've been jinxed by the game program, which featured me and said I had a "hot stick" with 12 points in 10 games, but I don't really care about points.  As long as I make a difference with my play and help our team win, I'm happy.  And I think I did that this weekend.  I'm just being hard on myself, like I've learned to be from my coaches.  I can only get better by knowing the things I need to work on.