First Practice for 2011-2012

Tuesday will be the first practice for the 2011-2012 season. I will have about eight new players and a new goalie. I should have enough players to have three forward lines and three defense pairs which would be good. I have about a month of practices before we play in the Frederick Cup in November and our regular season starts the week after the Frederick Cup.

Coming 2011-2012 Season

This past Sunday I had my welcome to the new season meeting with players and their parents. As always I explain to everyone my expectations for the parents and the players. Then I split the group up. I let the team manager go over the paperwork with the parents and I take the players into another room where we talked about what will happen at practice and what will happen on game day. I have about 20 players to start the season.

Life Has Changed

On July 24th my house and car were destroyed by fire which was started by an arsonist who has not been caught yet. Now I am getting back to preparing for the upcoming hockey season. Before I work on practice planning I  have to start to look for new coaching equipment which include getting new skates, gloves and a helmet.. I lost all these items in the fire.  More thoughts to come.

Looking for an assistant coach

As I start to think about the upcoming season the first thought is of my staff. Right now I have a team manager and one assistant coach. I am looking for at least one other coach who might have some background working with goalies. I would prefer this coach not be a parent but I can be flexible on this preference. Next preparing for the parent/player meetings.

What was SI Thinking?

I had been waiting for my Sports Illustrated issue with the Boston Bruins on the cover. I called SI and they said they were offering a championship package but there would be no cover. Hockey takes another slap in the face. The SI issue that should have the Bruins on the cover actually had golf on the cover. An SI cover with the Stanley Cup Champions on it does more to help the sport then a championship package. Not as many people buy a championship package as may buy an issue of SI. This would seem to show  that SI thinks less of hockey then golf. It would be nice to have SI explain their decision but that probably will not happen. If you show the Champions of baseball, football and basketball then hockey should get equal coverage. What do you think?

Another website

As I start to prepare for the upcoming season I have been looking on the internet. I was looking through websites looking for different drills because I like to change up my practices and use new drills every season. One website I found is HockeyShare.com. The site has some drills, a blog and a newsletter all that can be useful for coaches.
   If you have an interesting drill feel free to share.

Advance Warning

The other day my team manager called and let know that at this point it looks like we will have 24 players on the team. While it is nice to have 24 players I can only dress 21 players. If I get 25 or more players I will have to start a JV team. I will use our pre-season tournament to get a better idea how the team will shake out.