Battle of the Season!

Hi Hawks,
As you all know, we do battle with the Falcons on Friday evening. I can’t wait! They look like a tough opponent, so it will be all that more enjoyable when we emerge victorious!

A few notes on the Falcons:

Their record is 6-1-0, whereas we’re at 4-2-1. Do Hawks love a challenge?

They score quite a few goals, but they also allow roughly the same number of goals per game as us. We’ve allowed 15 goals in seven games, and the Falcons have allowed 14 goals. They have scored 24 goals in those seven games, versus our 16 goals. Clearly we need to shut down their scorers.

They have six players listed in the top 30 scoring leaders in the league. We have five such players (Jordan, the other Jordan (you can decide which is which ;)), Devin, Nathan and Aaron). So we’re fairly even matched on that front.

The Falcons only loss came at the hands (or the talons) of the Vultures, back on April 18. It was a 1-0 game, so obviously very close. The lone Vultures goal came with 10:00 minutes left in the first period.

While we’re playing the Falcons on Friday night, the Owls will be battling the Vultures. We’re the top four teams, all playing each other! Friday night is really the beginning of the playoffs, so let’s play like it!

Hawks, we don’t want to spend very much time in our end. We need to get the ball deep into Falcon territory and keep in there. So.....

Please study our systems! Know them. Especially Four-deep, The Gift, and The Trap. We’re going to do everything we can to keep the Friday night game as simple as possible. To do so, we’re going to focus on these three simple systems.

Using these systems, in the order I’ve listed them above, we’ll provide strong coverage for the short periods of time that we play in our zone, we’ll get the ball deep into Falcon territory every chance we get, and we’ll prevent them from escaping their zone.

If you execute these systems, we’ll head back to our dressing room a very satisfied (and sweaty and stinky and exhausted) team!

Go Hawks!
Coach Steve