We went 4-0 in the Vegas showcase!  Obviously, it was a good weekend, but we still have half the season left.  Can't let up when we get back.  Now, it's time for a well-needed break, though!  Off to Italy with the family!  I'm very lucky to be able to do these cool things with my family!

We played our best game of the season so far yesterday in a 6-1 rout of the Seattle Totems. We absolutely dominated them. In the first game we won 4-2 and played OK.  But now we know our potential as a team.  Our coaches were very impressed with how we played together.  My grandpa told me that we "were a completely different team" than the day before.

1 Year Anniversary

This weekend is my 1 year anniversary as an Idaho Junior Steelhead.  We're playing in the WSHL Showcase in Las Vegas this weekend. That's pretty cool.  It seems like this year has flown by, but at the same time it seems like 3 years have passed; I've changed a lot in the past year, as a hockey player and as a person.  Anyway, I'm really excited about this weekend--to see my grandparents and play hockey!  A lot has happened to me in the past year and a half as I've "followed my hockey dream" (I know, it's cheesy of me to use my own blog title in a post, but I'm taking a chance...) and this 1 year anniversary is pretty cool because it allows me to look back on all I've gone through:  mistakes and right decisions that have led me to where I am today.  It was kind of a strange road there for a while last year, but things worked out for me in the end, and now I'm on a team where I'm still learning every day and still getting better every day, if you can believe that...I don't know if you're tired of hearing about how much better I'm getting every day, but I really believe I am still improving and still have a lot to improve upon.  I'm proud to be a Steelhead.

Our coach gave us the spiel today after practice.  This weekend we have to play for each other because collectively we can make individuals shine.  To a scout--and this is something I've known all along; this isn't new to me, but it's good for it to be reiterated and for our rookies to hear--individual statistics are not nearly as important as how well a team plays together and how hard we play for each other.  Our coach tells us all the time that a college coach told him last year we were a team that could've beaten half the teams in the NAHL, not because we had certain superstars or goal scorers, but because of how we played together as a team and because of how hard we competed.  Another coach from the Boulder team we played last weekend told us that we play like a pro team, specifically in the way we enter the offensive zone with few turnovers.  We are relentless.  We get the puck out and get it deep and then go crush the other team with our forecheck.  That's our style of play.  And it works.  That's what we have to do this weekend for each other.  This weekend is a big chance for a lot of our players wanting to go onto the college level.

It's going to be a fun weekend.  There will be some good competition for us, and we play 4 games in 4 days.  Can't wait!

Here's a picture of me in the local newspaper in McCall!  My billet family up there put an ad in the paper for my upcoming birthday. It was a great surprise!  Just another example of the relationships you can make with people involved in junior hockey.  I will miss them over the next month!

And here's another picture of us taking our pregame walk in McCall.  It's pretty cool staying at a billet house that is about a 2 minute walk from the rink!  Not many junior teams in the country get to play at such a special place.  We are very lucky to call McCall home!

I'll Miss You, McCall

We swept the Boulder Bison this weekend!  That is a huge series for us because every head-to-head game with them is basically a 4 point game.  Now, it's going to be difficult for them to catch us in the division standings.  The games this weekend, though, were very important because we have a much harder schedule than them at the Las Vegas showcase next weekend.  I love playing up in McCall!  It's no surprise we have such a good record up there because we all just feel so at home, and it's always fun to play there.  We won all three games pretty handily even though we were playing a good Boulder team.  It's good to see us playing so well before the showcase, but I still believe we--and I, personally--can play even better.  Our coach keeps telling us he doesn't think we've come close to reaching our potential, and he could go through the locker room and tell each player something they need to do better to help our team reach our potential.

We won the first game 3-0 (I scored the first goal from the point), then won the second game 5-1, and won today 4-1.  The games were all close, but we played a style of game that Boulder did not want to play.  We dictated the direction of the series by playing physically and just tiring them out.  By the second period of the first game, I could tell they were tired, and we just kept rolling.  They did not have many scoring chances all weekend because our play in our defensive zone was great.  Our penalty kill was great this weekend, too, and we scored when we needed to.  It was a fun series.  The weekends in McCall always fly by, but I can't wait for Vegas!  My grandparents are coming to see me play, and then it's off to Italy with the family for me!

Big series against Boulder this weekend in McCall.  It's a battle between the top two teams in our division, so this could go a long way in determining home ice advantage in the playoffs!  It's gonna be fun.  I'm so excited to be back up in McCall!!

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately; I've just been very busy with work, hockey, and gearing up for the holidays.  We're going to Italy as a family to see my brother who's studying abroad in Copenhagen for the whole year!!

Close Call in Ogden

We got back from Ogden at 4:30 this morning.  It was a fun trip.  Again, I think our team is coming a lot closer.  We're starting to pull pranks on each other at the hotels (which I won't go into detail about), we're singing together on the bus, and just having a lot of fun.  That's what a long hockey season is all about.  The close relationships with friends I've made throughout this junior experience are some that I will hold onto forever.  It's hard to describe how close a team gets throughout a season, but battling with a teammate for a whole season creates a pretty close friendship, plus all the time you spend together off the ice on road trips and in the locker room.

The first night in Ogden, we won 7-1.  We were up 6-0 in the first period, playing really well, then we started to let up and try to do things individually.  Plus, the backup goalie for Ogden played a solid game after coming in when the score was 6-0.  On Saturday night, I think we came into the game much too confident.  We played with little energy for the first two periods.  We didn't necessarily play badly, but we didn't play with heart, which is something you always have to do in the sport of hockey.  After the 2nd period, we found ourselves in a 2-1 hole.  Ogden's goalie was again playing lights out, and we were mostly playing a perimeter possession game.  We had to change those things in the 3rd period if we were going to win.  Quickly, we tied the game up 2-2.  Then, a few defensive breakdowns got us back down by a score of 4-2 with 7 minutes left.  I got the puck on the point and just tried to put a shot on net.  I managed to get it through a lot of sticks and skates and the puck went in right on the ice.  It wasn't the greatest shot, but the goalie didn't even see it.  Sometimes you just have to get it there.  Now, we were only down 4-3.  With under a minute left, we tied the score up 4-4.  Once we got the game to overtime, there was no way we were going to lose or let the game go into a shootout.  We scored the game winner, again, with under a minute left in the overtime period.  It was a pretty exhilarating finish!  A little too close against a 3-18 team...

Sometimes it's hard to win.  There are going to be some off nights.  That's just the nature of sports.  Sometimes things won't go your way.  Their second goal hit our goalie and went in off my wrist.  We had some bad bounces go against us last night.  That fact combined with the other team's hot goalie made for a dangerous game for us.  But it's really good to know now that we are a team that can come back no matter what the circumstances are.  We fought and battled and nothing was going to keep us from winning.