When it comes to young hockey players, you can’t go wrong when you start with the basics and having fun.
That’s Atom B Seahawks head coach Brett Phillips philosophy as far as how he is teaching his team.
“We are focusing on the basics – skating, shooting, passing – before we get going on learning to break out of our own end,” he said following a 6-4 win over the Athabasca Storm Hawks Saturday afternoon at the Multiplex.
“We are about 90 per cent there and once we can get everyone on the same page, things will work out.”
Phillips added the biggest challenge so far has been trying to get the kids to learn what to do when they don’t have the puck, in their own zone or the attacking zone.
“They don’t really have it down on where to go when they don’t have the puck on their stick,” he said.
“Once we can teach them that, it will help create more chances and also assist in putting the pressure on when the other team has the puck.”
As for Saturday’s game, both teams are fairly even so even a little mistake can be costly.
“These two teams are so close, all it takes is one bad play to change the outcome,” said Phillips.
“We had a tough time covering in front of our net and gave away a lot of chances. We can’t do that. We are improving and getting a bit closer to the other teams in the league.”
Phillips added that it makes things twice as hard for his team since they are always chasing the puck, instead of letting it do the work for them, but it is going to take a lot more work before they will be able to get that part of their game squared away.
The Seahawks, who moved to a record of 4-4 with the victory, will take to the road face unbeaten Wabasca on Saturday. Puck drop is slated for 1 p.m.
Bulls fading
It was another shot the North Central Midget AA Bulls missed at getting their first win against a truly beatable opponent.
The Bulls fell 4-1 Sunday afternoon at the Multiplex to the Sturgeon Mustangs, leaving their hopes of turning things around to fade like a winter sunset.
Jackson Roth had the lone bright spot for the Bulls, scoring late in the second period on a strange play.
With the face-off set to go in the Bulls end, the home side got a line change in, but a mistake saw only four players line up to take the draw.
Not only did the team miss it, so did the officials and it wasn’t until a few seconds after the puck dropped that the Bulls bench realized they didn’t have enough players on the ice and sent out Roth.
By pure coincidence, just as Roth was making his way to get into the play, Rylan Durell picked up the loose puck and fired a perfect pass to Roth to send him in on the breakaway.
From there, Roth fended off a Mustang player and managed to put it home.
For head coach Jody Tangedal, that lone goal should have been a spark for his club.
“We were in the game, it was just we had a couple of breakdowns that cost us,” he said.
“They scored on two 3-on-1 chances we gave up and we were not able to capitalize on the opportunities we got.”
Tangedal knows they have the talent to compete with at least some of the teams, but feels maybe some guys are trying to hard and maybe over-thinking the game right now.
“Maybe we’re playing too nice and gripping our sticks a bit tight,” he stated.
“The guys are trying, that’s for sure. We just need to cut down on the mistakes and keep trying to win those battles.
I hope some more work at some extra practices and dryland training will give us what it takes to get up over that hump.“
Next up for the Bulls is Wetaskiwin on Saturday (6 p.m., Multiplex) before they head to Slave Lake to play the Thunder Sunday.
