Practice 11/30/07

A fairly good turnout of fans today for practice. Given that it was Friday I was expecting more of a turnout although I would guess that there were around 30 people in attendance.

As usual the goalies were first on the ice. Weeks came out and did more skating drills with Ondrej and Moose. The goalies were in the crease and had to state side to side and then to the top of the crease. Then Slater, Haydar, and Thorburn came out to take shots on the goalies.

Slater looked to have tweaked his left wrist as he took his left glove off several times and was looking at his wrist and stretching it.

Weeks then had the shooters post 5 feet in front of the net and take one timers from passes that came from the corners behind or beside the net.

During this drill the goalies let in quite a few shots.

Then McCrimmon had a dump and chase drill. One common theme of the practice, once everyone got on the ice that is, was dump and chase and digging pucks from the boards in the corners behind the net. There were a few drills where the puck would be shot into the corner and taken out by a D man and then skated down the ice at which point it would be dumped into the zone.

They did the normal 2 on 1 and 3 on 2 drills. Today though there seemed to be more work done on digging the pucks off the boards than usual. Some of the time was spent carrying the puck out of the defensive zone and into the offensive zone.

Do not recall seeing any work on the PP today.


Observations:

1. No laughs and only a few smiles today.
2. Players seemed to skate harder today than usual. Some contact with other players along the boards which was harder than usual.
3. Goalies let in alot of shots especially in the drill where the player was posted in front of the net.
4. More emphasis on dump and chase today than usual.
5. Ondrej stayed on the ice for a good amount of time after Moose left.
6. DW was on the ice most of the practice which is unusual.
7. McCrimmon was evidently not happy with the play last night because he had longer conversations than usual with the players when setting up a drill. It appeared that he was going over what when wrong last night (on the white board) and then would talk the players through the drill so as to show them how to improve on the areas that need work.
8. No autographs from Holik today.
9. Kovy seems to be spending more time signing autographs lately than he has in the past.