The Boys Are Back in Town, But We're Leaving Again Friday!

It's so nice to be back in Boise.  The road trip to Long Beach and El Paso was a lot of fun, but it was also A LOT of bus travel, and sometimes the rigid schedule of a team's itinerary on the road gets old (wake up, eat breakfast, go back to sleep, eat pregame meal, go back to sleep, go to game, play, eat postgame meal, go to sleep, do it all over again) so it's nice to be back on my own schedule.  We had the day off on Monday, and yesterday, our coaches came on the ice and played with us in a 4-on-4 scrimmage.  We had the head coach on our team, and it was a really fun day of practice.  My team won.  I scored 4 goals.  No big deal.  And today we had another laid back practice, kind of getting back in the groove of things because we weren't able to practice at all on our 10 day road trip.  It was noticeable that we hadn't practiced in a while because we were all a little slow on the ice.  Tomorrow, though, our coach said we are going to have a tough practice.  We've had a few days to sort of mentally and physically recover from the trip, and it's time to get back at it.  We're going to do a lot of battle drills and competitive drills to get us ready for our 2 game series in Ogden this weekend.

I think the long road trip really brought us together as a team, as it should when you travel with the same people for so many hours.  Before the trip, there were definitely some cliques on our team, which I think is natural for any team.  But I can honestly say that we've become a lot more unified after our big road trip.  I think those games were an important step for us.  6 games in 9 nights is hard.  But we did it, and we didn't lose a game in regulation.  Good teams have to be able to win on the road, and we did that.  We had a lot of learning experiences on the trip, like when we let a 4 goal lead slip in Long Beach and when we realized in El Paso that sometimes refs are going to "homer" us, but we played through those challenges, and took a big step together.  Now, we have to keep this good thing going.  No mental lapses this weekend in Ogden.  Ogden is a team we should beat, but those games are usually the most dangerous.  In any case, we're back on the road again on Friday.  At least it's only a 4 hour trip this time, though.  That's a cake walk compared to the 22 hour trek to El Paso.

Big win, big series, big road trip!! 10/12 points on the road, picking up at least a point in every game! That's a big road trip for us, one that could be very important for us down the road.  I've had a lot of fun, but I'm ready to get the hell back to Boise!  Still a long trip ahead of us, though.  At least 20 more hours on the bus...FEAR THE FISH.

Game - On!

Another huge game tonight. We won on Wednesday 5-3 and played pretty well. We played with a little fear, and that's always when you play the best. Our coach keeps telling us, though, that he thinks we got El Paso's B game. They're going to come out a lot harder tonight and we have to be ready. There are few chances for us as a team to make statements because the bottom line is that sometimes our quality of opponent is not the greatest in this league. That's why our coach also stresses that practice needs to be where we make steps as a team, where we really push ourselves, compete, and get better. This series is one where we can really measure ourselves as a team and make a statement in the league. It's one of the--if not the--most important series of the year for us. I'm so excited for tonight. Our coach has also kept telling us that how successful we are as college hockey players will be determined by how well we play in big games against tough opponents. Tonight's game is a big game.

Good ol' Thanksgiving dinner at McDonald's in El Paso! Everything else was closed...

Biggest Game of the Year

Tonight we play the El Paso Rhinos in what is the biggest game of the year so far.  We need to be ready to play our best because El Paso is going to be very good.  Yesterday, we had a short, hard practice.  It felt really good to get out there and blow off some steam after being stuck on a bus for a few days.  And tonight at 7:30 we play our first game of 3 here in El Paso.  It's going to be fun.  Just being here reminds me of when we came in and won the Thorne Cup last year, and I don't think the fans or the team has forgotten about that.

Finally in El Paso!

We made it to El Paso...finally!  I was so glad to get off the bus, and I went straight to the hotel exercise room to run when we got here because I just felt so lethargic and sore.  We've spent a lot of time on the bus this trip, but now we're here.  And I can see Mexico!  I couldn't think of a better place to spend Thanksgiving.  Tomorrow we get to practice and get our bus legs out even though we don't play until Wednesday night.  It's good to be back; it's brought back some memories from our Thorne Cup Championship Series last year, and we're looking to have another good showing here on the road.

The game on Saturday night in Long Beach ended up being a disaster.  It was pretty embarrassing.  We were up 4-0 in the first period and ended up losing 6-5 in a shootout.  No one was very happy about it, but it definitely exposed some of our team's weaknesses and some of our players' weaknesses, which will be good in the long run.  The next day we came out and absolutely dominated.  We won 7-2 and played much better throughout the whole game, proving that our loss on Saturday night was definitely a fluke.

Last night we won 4-0.  We played really well defensively, considering we were on the bus for 20 hours the past 2 days.  But we got those bus legs out, and I think we're going to play even better tonight.  Our coach singled the defense out and told us we've made some big improvements in moving the puck and making the right decisions under pressure, which is heartening because we've been working on that stuff a lot lately.  I'm excited for tonight!