WEEKEND ROUNDUP & HEAD COACH ANALYSIS

Nov 1, 2022 | All News, Results

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

A 2 game weekend saw us end up on the wrong side of 2 defeats but passion and commitment were shown, thee were some promising displays on the ice from a number of players and unfortunate further injury misery. Here’s the roundup:

SATURDAY 29th OCTOBER

Slough Jets v Invicta Dynamos (League)

FINAL SCORE – 3-2

DYNAMOS GOALS – Condren & Lascek

SUNDAY 30th OCTOBER

Invicta Dynamos v Streatham IHC (Cup)

FINAL SCORE – 6-9

DYNAMOS GOALS – Harris (3), Strawson, B.Chard & Long

HEAD COACH ANALYSIS

We began the weekend with a tough return fixture away at Slough following the 5-2 defeat the previous week. I learned Friday alongside the injuries we had already, we’d be missing both Louis Colvin and Juraj Huska for personal family reasons. We pride ourselves on being a family here so of course we support our brothers when it comes to such circumstances.

So short benched we arrived in Slough on Saturday still with the belief that we could take something from the game. It was an end to end affair with both teams matching each other for intensity. The boys worked tirelessly throughout the game and stuck with Slough who are an extremely talented team.

During the course of the game we took a couple of injuries; Rich Harris who got hit by a puck to the face in the first period leaving him with a pretty nasty cut and very swollen jaw (thankfully not broken) and then we lost Gregor in the 3rd to a hit that caused him some problems with his ACL. We are still assessing just how long he’ll be missing for.

Despite those bad bounces the team pushed their way back into the game and found ourselves extremely unlucky in the final minute not to score the equaliser when we had pulled our goalie.

I was very happy with the heart and determination that the boys showed during the game and I think if we had been on the right side of some questionable / missed calls the score line may have been different.

We moved in to Sunday against Streatham welcoming back Louis and seeing Rich ice despite the previous nights injury.

We started horrendously. 5-1 down in the first period. Showing them far too much respect and giving them way too much space. Quite simply we didn’t play with Passion and Commitment, a non negotiable for our team.

One highlight during the first period was the intensity and spirit of Ed Stedman and Brandon Chard. They both led by example and so I bumped them up to play with Stano knowing that they could spark more life in to the game.

They had the desired effect lifting their team mates and driving improvement in their performances also. We got amongst them, didn’t back down from them and ultimately deserved to win the 2nd period closing the gap to 6-4.

We knew that the final period would see a reaction from them as they looked to swing that 5 goal deficit from our previous encounter that was awarded to us 5-0. So it was important to stick with them. We caused our own problems by taking a few needless penalties (myself included) and that gave them a way to open the scoring gap between us… but we stuck with it and I felt we deserved the final goal just down to sheer determination across the 2nd & 3rd period. 9-6 was another respectable score against a very strong RedHawks team.

Special mentions of course go to Ed and Brandon for their spirited performances, Taylor for stepping up and really putting in 2 solid games of hockey, Harry and Joe for their fights and Rich for his hat trick especially considering the injury the night before.

I know it was still 2 losses this weekend, but still lessons learned and improvements to make. So we now put 100% focus on the Raiders game this week and put in a good week of training to make sure we are ready come Sunday!

COYD 🐴🏒💪

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