Practice 12/10/07

I will be starting a new website in the coming weeks on which I will post my practice blog. The website is thrashpractice.com. Look for it in the next week or so.

Not that big of a turnout today (fan wise). There were 20 fans in attendance. However, the media was well represented by Craig Custance, a TV crew, and Jeff Shultz from the AJC. They were apparently there today because Mark Recchi practiced with the team for the first time.

As usual, Moose was first on the ice followed by Kari. They warmed up with a somewhat normal skating drill within the faceoff circles. The drill was skating forward, backward, and side to side.

Then Thorburn, Little, Slater, and Recchi came onto the ice. Thorburn, Slater, and Little took shots on the goalies.

Weeks had what sounded (from afar) like a pep talk with Kari. The two words I could actually hear were "pisse_ off". I could be wrong, but I think Steve was telling Kari to forget the game on Saturday and come out to play like he was pisse_ off.

Slater talked to Recchi for awhile when Recchi came out onto the ice. They appeared to be talking about Mark's new blue gloves (guess he had to get new gloves because the black ones he wore in Pittsburgh probably would be a bit of a color clash with our uniforms...)

McCarthy is sporting a new Easton stick these days (much like the ones that Boulton and Tobias use).

The team moved onto the alternate ice surface at the beginning of the scheduled practice (10 am). Once there they started with a drill where the puck was dumped behind our own zone net and brought out by a forward and skated down the ice by a line of 3 forwards. Once in the offensive zone the forward took a shot on net. After the first shot was taken 2 D men would enter the offensive zone and would then take the next shot with the 3 forwards posted in front of or around the net.

Here are some of the line combos I saw at the beginning of practice today:

Haydar / Little / Slater
Thorburn / Slava / Holik
Slater / Boulton / Dupuis
Larsen / Perrin / Recchi
Kovy / White / Hoss

Kovy was really hot and scoring on almost every shot at the beginning of practice.

The next drill was a 2 on 2 with two forwards entering the offensive zone and taking a shot. Then a shot would come in from the following D men and the 2 forwards would attempt a deflection.

The last drill was a 5 on 5 drill starting in one zone and then when the team of 5 lost possession the play would move to the other zone with a new line of 3 forwards coming out to take the place of the 3 forwards which had started on the ice. The D men also rotated into the play as well.

Here are some other line combinations I noticed at the end of the practice:

Little / Haydar / Perrin
Recchi / Slater / Boulton
Kovy / White / Hoss
Thorburn / Slava / Holik
Slater / Boulton / Dupuis
Recchi / Little / Larsen
Larsen / Perrin / Recchi

There was no practice again on the power play.

At the end of the official practice Kovy was on the far end of the ice apparently practicing his shootout moves against the Moose. He probably took 10 shots or so on Moose.

Observations

1. Recchi takes very small strides when he is trying to skate fast. His skating motion just kind of sticks out compared to the other players.
2. Recchi is wearing #8
3. The practice drills appear to be designed by both McCrimmon and Weeks. I say this because today McCrimmon would explain part of the drill to the team and then Weeks would chime in with his thoughts (I think he was explaining to either the D men or goalies what he wanted to see happen during the drill...could be wrong).
4. Larsen appeared to get cut on the right side of his face during the practice as the asst. training was holding a towel against that part of his face/head for a long time during one of the stoppages in practice. I did not see him come off the ice so I don't know for sure what happened.
5. It was apparent to me that they tried Recchi with many people/lines (other than the top line) to see if there were any early signs of chemistry between him and the other players.
6. Recchi did not appear to "gel" with any line or players in particular. I think they will have him on the 3rd and 4th lines and see what happens. Since there was no PP practice today I could not tell what PP line he will be on.
7. Recchi has reasonably good speed but is nowhere close to Dupuis or Kovy. I would say he's slightly faster than Larsen.