Thanksgiving day practice, 11/22/07

Another good turnout for practice today. I would say there were probably 40 people were in attendance.

Ken Klee's three sons and, I believe, Todd White's son were on the ice over an hour before practice started. Ken would come out of the locker room and give skating tips to the kids from time to time.

When Kari and Ondrej came on the ice Ken said to Kari "How was practice yesterday"? It was a joke about how the team had a game and Kari had practice...Kari laughed and smiled.

Today was the second practice in a row where Kovy, Slava, Hoss, X, and Klee were not on the ice. Joining the "non practicing" players was Boulton, White, and Toby. DW, as usual, was not on the ice but did come out of the locker room for a brief chat with the fans.

Kari does not have his new goalie mask yet, or atleast if he has it he's not using it yet.

As with practice on Tuesday, Ondrej and Kari came out early. They did the same basic drills as Tuesday where they practiced skating/sliding side to side in and out of the goal crease. Then Thorburn, Haydar, DuPuis, and White came out and took turns taking shots on net with the goalies in the crease.

Ondrej looked sharp and Kari was better today...both in his play and mood.

Ondrej said he is playing Saturday which means the Moose will be playing against the Devils tomorrow in Blueland.

Again, as in prvious McCrimmon practices the players did touch pass drills at center ice with one man breakaway shots between the face off dots and then two/three man breakaways.

Moose left the ice early. It simply appeared he had practiced enough.

Observations

1. McCrimmon continues to run fast paced, competition based, drills with the squad. The players seem to like the competition part of the drills and it appears to make the drills fun for them.
2. Kovy's car was not at the practice facility. I did not see if Hoss or Slava's cars were there or not.
3. McCarthy does not look happy. Obviously he's not too excited about being a healthy scratch or having such poor stats at this point in the season (minus 12 or so with no goals or assists yet).