The loss in Solent although disappointing was not an unacceptable performance, but more of an unacceptable first 10 minutes..
We spoke a few weeks before about starting on time and strong and this obviously didn't happen on Saturday. My message to the guys from day one has been you can never win a game in one period, but you can certainly lose one and I think this was the classic example.
As a coach, whenever you have to call a time out in the first period it usually means things are not going to plan.
After that time out I think it's fair to say the boys picked up and battled and we saw our real battling qualities come out. No team is going to win every game and its important in the manner that you lose sometimes. As a coach and I'm sure our fans are the same, as long as you can see effort and pride in the jersey, sometimes no matter how well you play, the team you play may need to just be better than you on the day and all you can do is shake their hands, dust yourself down and get ready for the next game.
That's certainly what we did on Sunday against MK. I thought we were dominant from the start and never looked in any trouble at all. We passed the puck brilliantly and some of the goals we scored were breathtaking.
It was a complete team performance,bu t I thought the line of Moody, Wardlaw and Hind-Pitcher were excellent combining for 7 of the 8 goals. That type of performance from that line is something we need to see more of for us to be successful and this may be the catalyst that starts that process.
Having a big lead at the end of the second period also gave us a chance to give Aaron Burton some game time and Ross Miller some well deserved rest. Aaron was outstanding and looked really solid, stopping everything shot at him in the third period. Having two good goalies will give our team so much confidence moving forward and puts us in a good spot leading into the remainder of the regular season and the playoffs.
Sundays game was unfortunately marred by the injury to Josh Abbott. I'm not going to go into how I feel about the hit apart from the fact that the video evidence is with the EIHA and we will see if anything happens in that regard.
Happily Josh is on the mend and we will hopefully see him back in a yellow jersey in the next few weeks.
It was nice to see our boys stick up for Josh and address the incident. Its always important to stick up for your team mates and its important that this was addressed. I found it difficult to understand how there was no call on the play, but as I say it got addressed by the boys and we move on.
Its always nice to win both of your games on a double header weekend if possible, but getting the 2 points against MK means we have won 3 of our last 4 games and sees us in good spirits moving into this weekend against Invicta.
We will keep working all the way until the end of the season. We want to catch Raiders who are 2 points ahead of us and we get the opportunity to improve that situation next weekend when we play them twice.
I hope to see you all on Sunday at Oxpens Road.
GO STARS GO!!!
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