Labor Day Weekend

So while everyone was throwing and attending end of the summer parties, I was in a rink all weekend. The 2009-10 Neponset Valley River Rats Tier 1 Midget AAA season has begun. It started last Monday with practices and continued thru this Monday. We have a whole new team this year with only 4 guys back from last season. Myself and my buddy Scott McDougall brought in the best hockey players born in 1991-1993 we could find and we found some great talent. Guys on our team are committed to Wisconsin, Princeton, Brown and Union; with more guys who will be committing soon.

We had 2 good practices then played a league game Wednesday and a scrimmage game Thursday. Wednesday we beat the Western Mass Blades 12-0 at home. Then we played the South Shore Kings of the Eastern Junior Hockey League on Thursday at home and beat them 4-3. The Kings are a junior A team that are being looked at as the best team in their league. It was a great game to coach and we came back from a 3-1 deficit halfway thru the game. After those 2 games we were onto the Tier 1 Faceoff in Marlboro, MA. We beat the Phantom Fireworks 6-0 in a mercy rule shortened game Friday, they had been moved up a division due to a team backing out last minute and their goalie played great. On Friday we played the Boston Little Bruins, who knocked us out of the tournament in the semi finals last year. We beat them 4-2 and it felt good to get a little revenge. That night we had to play the Cape Cod Whalers in a tournament/league game so it was a very important game. After being up the entire game and taking it to them all night we blew a 3-0 lead within the last 5 minutes of the game and ended up tying 3-3. It was a tough one to swallow, but luckily we bounced back on Sunday. We started off with a 4-2 win over the Western NY Selects and finished round robin play with a 3-2 win over the New Jersey Colonials. Finishing 4-0-1 record in the tourney ranked us first in our bracket and gave us a semi final matchup against the always strong Mid-Fairfield Black team.

Two years ago in the tournament Mid-Fairfield gave us one of our worst losses by mercy ruling us 7-1. It was something we made sure to tell the boys about before the game and as fate would have it we won the game by the same 7-1 score ending the game by mercy rule. The win set up a rematch against the Whalers and we wanted to win badly. We have never won the tournament, winning it would set us up nicely for a number 1 ranking in the country and also avenge our previous tie.

It's funny I've played in alot of big games and I've never been very nervous. But when you're coaching and can't get out there to control the play and all you can do is tell guys when to change up or offer advice it's a totally different feeling. You can do everything you can to get the guys ready, but then it's up to them. The first period we were all over them but couldn't score and were down 2-0 after the 1st. We were able to get 1 in the 2nd and hold them off the board to end the 2nd period down 2-1. Then the 3rd period was all us. We scored a short handed goal to tie it up with about 13 minutes left and then took it to them hard. We finally scored the eventual game winner on a bomb from defenseman Kyle Quick with about 5 minutes left and were able to hold on for the win.

So as it stands now we are 8-0-1 with a couple weeks off so guys can move into prep school and deal with school activities the first few weekends. I'll be sure to keep you updated when the national rankings come out.