Update: Fri Sep 17

Hi Team,

First off a thanks for all your support you have been giving me. I have had tons of well wishes and encouragement. Much appreciated. I have heard that I have many blog followers, that is great news.

Also a belated thanks for our turnout so far, especially for the player skills sessions. You recall we received a no so great 9:00 PM on a Sunday night and a equally not so great 4:15 PM on a Monday afternoon. I had a few parents threaten to be no shows. I was so concerned my sort-outs would get challenged if a ton of players missed their times, I squeezed an extra hour out of KMHA for contingency in case players missed their one and only skills evaluation session.

Guess what, my parents gave me some fantastic support and the turnout was overwhelmingly successful. Even some of the parents who said their son would not attend bitterly made their ice times. I had 100% attendance for the 4:15 PM time and only one missed the 9:00 PM. This helps.

As a result, I was able to give back the funny "7:00 AM Reserved" ice time in the schedule.

Apologies again for the body checking clinic confusion. Recall the sort out plan for peewee is:
Players assessed as peewee A after the first two times will be further assessed on their willingness to engage in the physical part of the game. This body checking clinic is mandatory for those players who wish to play at the peewee A level.

As we have a compressed schedule, I actually cannot re-access after the first two ice times and will re-assess after the three ice times (player skills and two games). I wanted to have the body checking clinic after Sunday. This way we would have a smaller pool of players who needed to attend the clinic.

Unfortunately we had to schedule a body checking clinic Friday instead, before most of the players had completed any of their games. I took a stab at trying to run the body checking clinic without completed sort-out information. My thinking was that I cannot very well tell players they cannot attend the clinic and imply no House A without completing half of their sort-out sessions, so I invited the lot of them to the clinic.

Unfortunately, my strategy failed and my email went out to way too many players and everyone wanted to attend. Health and safety dictates a maximum of 25 players on the ice at a time. As a compromise, we had to scramble and create a different schedule. Last years Atom A players at 6:00 PM and last years Peewee B players at 7:00 PM. Thanks goes out to the KMHA team for fixing my problem for me.

Please remember that game one and game two are non contact and failure to have attended a body checking clinic in no way changes your evaluations. Having coached an Atom B team last year, my new peewee players are expecting a fair chance at a spot in A and they are receiving it.

When we get past Sunday, we will know how many additional players need to attend a clinic. We can then work something out with a much smaller pool of players, if the evaluations so indicate.

I would finally remind all of us that we have three A teams this year. It is an ODMHA rule that our organization must be 20% A, 60% B and 20% C. We are afforded a fourth C team as we do not interlock and have our own four team league. The privilege is that our C teams are a little stronger at tournaments.

If I went by the parents, we would have eight A teams and not three. I can tell already that I am going to have a bunch of unhappy parents who's son does not make A.

When you are watching your son this weekend, please be objective when accessing his performance. Players are ranked top, middle and bottom in each game. Question yourself, is my son dominating the game, is he the top player in the game, is he influencing the outcome?

Games on again at 8:00 AM tomorrow.