As you may have seen from my previous post, the U15 games are complete for today. Overall the games had much different feels from each other but all the games were good. The first game, Red vs. Black, was a very physical grinding game that had lots of board work broken up with some nice group breakouts on both sides. The game ended in a tie and a shootout followed. In the shootout (5 shooters each)
Black went first and nobody scored until the last black skater. Unfortunately for Red, they could not answer and Black took the day.
The Teal vs. White game was a very good game all the way through. Teal had some troubles out of the gate and it seemed like White would take over the game. I don’t know what the coach said to the girls but coming out in the second half (yes half as they only played 2 periods) after the flood, the Teal team started to come back. The played very well, withstood a late period 6-5 after white pulled the goalie.
Purple vs. Gold was the final game of the day and to me it felt slower than the previous games. In all likely hood it might have been that I was tired and hungry but who knows. I’ll ask some other observers tomorrow for a more balanced opinion. Despite the final score, the Purple team played pretty well. They had moments of complete breakdown which accounted for most of the goals. Other times, they looked like they were taking it to Gold but just couldn’t get it in the net. Gold played very consistently the whole game and it payed off.
After seeing the girls doing drills all week and now watching the games, it seemed to make it easy to notice the girls in the games that did well in the drills. With the exception of few, it was fairly apparent who would do well and to me, it turned out that way in the games.
Random: The poor spectator viewing setup really reared it’s ugly head during the games. They were all played on one rink and the seating was very limited. There seemed to be a fair amount of college representatives in attendance and a lot of people were taking notes.
Next up: U15 and U16 practices tomorrow morning followed by U16 games in the afternoon.
Photos from Day 4 are HERE
