After a tough two games here at the IPC Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships (Pool-B) in Tomakomai, Japan, today was a well earned rest day.
We had the ice from 9 – 10.30 and I made it an optional skate, so that that wanted to come down could have a skate and work on anything they wanted to. There were no formal drills and the team worked on some shooting and then played 3-on-3 giving Bryan a good workout in goal.
After lunch I re-watched the Japan game to see where we have areas to improve on, and also to assess what went well. I’m still happy with the way we played in the game and the effort the team showed. We stopped the Japanese playing their preferred passing game by playing aman marking as opposed to zone marking game.
This afternoon saw a Coaches v Officials game at the rink for an hour. The game was played for fun and I think us coaches ran out the winners in the end. I have learnt that I should really bring some leg pads if i’m going to play Defence in such a game, and also having my skates sharped the day before was probably not the brightest of ideas !
This evening we held a team meeting / Game Debrief session where I spoke with the team about the Japan game and the things we did well, and the bits we need to focus on in our last two games. We also spoke a bit about the Slovakia game tomorrow.
After yesterdays results we now know that on Saturday Japan and the Czech Republic will face off in the Gold medal game, whilst we will face Slovakia for the Bronze. It’s worked out that tomorrows two games are dress rehearsels for the medal games, which makes them a strange game to play and coach.
One thing the team were happy about was me cancelling Saturdays pre-game practice session at 7am !
So, Slovakia tomorrow to decide who wears what colour shirt and has which bench on Saturday and a chance for me to play around with the lines during the game to try some new combinations ahead of the medal game.
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