Practice 12/6/07

Good turnout today for a mid week practice. It started at 11 which probably made it easier for fans to take a "long lunch" to go and watch practice. There were 40 people in attendance today.

As usual (except when he was the starting goalie most nights when Kari was out) Moose was out first. Havelid soon joined Moose and took shots on the Moose.

Kari came out and then he and Moose skated down to the other net for some drills with Steve Weeks. Kari and Moose at one point took off their practice jerseys and traded. Apparently they had each others' jerseys on when they hit the ice. When they were switching jerseys I got a look at the equipment they wear. Kari has much larger shoulder padding (higher atop his shoulder area) than the Moose does. I also noticed that Kari is letting his hair grow out and currently is not sporting any coloring effects to his hair (ie, no highlights...I think that is what they are called... like he's had before). Weeks did a specific drill with the goalies where he would have them start in the middle of the crease and then slide to the post to block a low shot.

Kovy and Hoss were not on the ice today. They were at the facility but not on the ice.

The first drill was a passing drill I have not seen before. It entailed skating and passing and then shooting from just inside the blue line McCrimmon stopped everyone after 2 minutes of the drill and basically gave them a pretty big and loud tongue lashing including the F bomb many times. We could hear it all the way over in the stands. They then started the drill again and apparently he was happier with their efforts as they moved onto another drill after 4 minutes.

At one point Tobias stood up Haydar when he was entering the zone on the next drill which was a variation of the first drill. Basically Toby dropped Haydar. X was most pleased with this as he started yelling and banging his stick on the boards.

As normal, the drills were competition based so when one side/team made a good shot and goal the players would cheer.

Kari was once again checking his positioning after several of the shots to see if he was in the proper place to address the shooter and make the save.

The last drill was a three on two drill with a trailing D man coming in to maintain pressure in the offensive zone.


Observations

1. There is no joy on Zhitnik's face during practices. Everyone else, at times, seems to have some fun and yell or cheer. Not Zhitnik. Hopefully if his play and stats improve he will demonstrate a bit more of a playful or fun attitude during practice.

2. The players only skated for 30 minutes. Todd White said that with the back to back games coming up this Friday and Saturday they did not want to practice too long today.

3. No PP work was done today. Given that we were 0 for 9 last night I went to practice thinking we would see some PP work.

4. No DW on the ice today.

5. I have not seen McCrimmon as animated and upset at practice as he was today. Perhaps he is starting to take more of an overt and direct charge with the players.

6. Hoss was walking around the locker room by the door before practice in some workout clothes. He was happy and upbeat so I think he was working out in back and getting some treatment.