End of 2023-24 Season

Unfortunately, day two of the Puck of the Irish tournament was a bit of a struggle. Our first game of the day was against the first place team TAYHA, who made a statement on the first day by putting up 15 goals in two games. We managed to hold them to five goals. Even though it’s been a few days now, I still find it strange to say how proud I am of a defensive effort in a 5-0 loss, but honestly, it could have been 10-0 or more if our team wasn’t so determined to make things difficult for TAYHA.

Team party was great – the team parents all expressed how much they appreciated the gifts. Head coach had some pucks laser engraved for each player, and I put together a 10×13 team collage and 5×7 action photo for everyone. The other assistant coach and I each received a glass stein from the head coach, and one of the kids and parents were nice enough to give each of us coaches a $10 gift card.

Going into our final game, it would have taken a lot of things to go well for us to end up playing on Sunday. We were playing another team that was in a decent position to get fourth place and an extra game on Sunday. This last game turned out to be a very strange one for sure. A lot of silly and careless penalties by both teams made things difficult, and probably should have led to some power play goals in the long run. Unfortunately, we couldn’t seem to get the puck in the net despite maybe four or five very good chances, including a few on a full 90 second 5 vs 3 power play at the end of the second period. Sometimes that happens, but it did feel like the Metro Jets had a little more motivation than us and they ended up with a 3-0 win.

Not the ending of a season we had hoped for. It is unfortunate that we didn’t have another month or so to keep playing. This last month in particular showed how far each player had come over the last six months, and it would have been great to get in some more games with them. My only regret has been not getting to know the team very well off the ice – that was the difficult thing about being the coach from out of town.