After a one-week break for a trip to Providence, I went back to Sabby's Clinic at the Valley Ice Center for what will probably be the last time because of scheduling difficulty next week. Also, I probably don't want to ruin what was a good day at the rink yesterday.
Without a diagram or a Drill Draw, I'm not going to try anymore to describe the drills. Instead, I'll just say how I think my skills fared and what I might need to work on.
As usual, my biggest skating deficiency is tight turns. It gets even worse when I'm trying to carry a puck because I end up slowing down to try to keep the puck on my stick. Even just turning with the puck is a problem sometimes, especially when turning to my right, because I either lose the puck off my blade or I slow down as I make my turn and attempt to crossover. As a right shot, it's even more awkward trying to turn to my right because I can't just cup the puck on my blade the way I can if I turn left. Of course, turning left is a problem because my tight turns in that direction are infinitely worse than doing tight turns to my right.
Overall stickhandling and carrying the puck feels worlds different after a few weeks getting on the ice. I'm not longer terrified to handle the puck even though I still bobble it sometimes, and I'm 1000% better than even last month at making and receiving passes.
I definitely feel and notice that my straight-away skating speed is improving with ice time and technique changes and attention to detail. I'm getting better at knowing when and how to expend my energy on the ice, but guys who used to be faster than I am, I'm catching up to in speed. There were multiple races back into my defensive zone during the scrimmage yesterday where someone would have had a sure breakaway, but I at least managed to be a warm body between the shooter and my goaltender.
If the last time I went to Sabby's clinic was a display in how to dominate the drills and fail miserably in the scrimmage, yesterday was the polar opposite. Execution in drills wasn't terribly sharp, and there were multiple instances of fanning on the puck while attempting to take a shot. But once the scrimmage started, I felt great. I didn't wear myself out the way I did in previous weeks, I scored 2 goals, had 2 blocked shots, and didn't have any egregious turnovers.
On my first goal, the puck turned over at my blue line, and almost everyone was behind me, so I took it and had a 2-on-1 skating in on the right side. The defender had the pass covered pretty well, and I was definitely looking pass almost the entire time, but when it was clear I had to shoot, I took the shot. The puck went 7-hole and I thought the goalie saved it, but when I kept going to the side of the net, I saw the puck squeak through and barely cross the line as I went behind the net.
The second goal was on the same shift. A player on the other team was trying to carry the puck across his own blue line, but he left it behind trying to get a handle on it, and I skated it back in. An attempted pass went behind the net, and after some great work by a teammate, he got the puck to me wide open on the back door, and there's no way I would have screwed that one up.
I go back to Providence in a week. I can't wait to get back to work on a rink where I don't have to pay money for ice time. It'll also be nice to have the rink more or less to myself since there are only about 4 or 5 other people there (at most) at any given time. Even better, I can't wait for the spring section of our intramural season. It's amazing what scoring goals even in a low-key situation like a clinic scrimmage can do for your confidence.
2 questions/suggestions for you:
ReplyDelete1. try a different tape on your blade or curve of blade on your stick. I find that black tape helps me see the position of the puck on my blade much easier with my peripheral vision than white tape.
2. Can you do tight turns without the puck? If so then ignore this suggestion. Depending on how hard the ice is, and how deep your skate blades are cutting into the ice, it might help you to get a deeper hollow. I like a 3/8" hollow on my skates. You don't coast as well so you have to keep skating more, but the sharper edges mean I am able to maneuver faster and better when the ice is hard.
1. i use black tape, and my blade is already a black/ dark color anyway. it's not an issue of knowing where my stick is, but still trying to work out how it all feels. i have a blade i absolutely love (Warrior Mac Daddy stick, Jovanovski curve), but i'm still trying to work out "ok, putting this much force in this direction on this part of my stick" and basically getting a better feel for how to handle the puck. granted, i've found that a round toe is better for stickhandling than the square toe of my Jovanovski, but there are many more pros than cons for my preferred curve.
Delete2. tight turns without the puck are still kind of dicey. either my turning radius is bigger than i'd like it to be (or than i imagine that it should be--which may also have to do with sizing issues because my left boot is juuust a half-size too big for my left foot), or i slow down going into the turn which defeats the whole purpose since i'm supposed to more or less maintain speed while changing directions. i haven't had my skates sharpened in a while, but i have toyed with the idea of going from half to a 7/16".
i'm terrible at judging the quality of ice, except that the curling ice at the same facility feels like it's ice made from something other than water. but the 7/16" suggestion was from a fellow clinic-goer.
thanks for the comment and suggestions!