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!
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