The Kelowna Knights had a bit of a rough start at the beginning of the season, so they are in high spirits after their stellar performance towards the end of the season, so they are trying to keep that positive energy up and keep their momentum going into the playoffs. Their first opponent being the Quebec City Citadelles, a team of which they had a 3 - 3 win loss against in the regular season is getting the Kelowna Knights pumped as well, we want to settle the score this season once and for all, and what better place than the playoffs? As for my player, Jauhnne Hawky, he is doing what he is always doing, he is continuing his training regimen to steadily improve his skills. After all this is it, these are his first playoffs and he needs to be as ready as possible so he can perform for his team, he does not want to let them down, especially now.
The Yukon Malamutes faced Newfoundland Berserkers in the 1st round. Malamutes finished in the 3rd place of the Northern Conference (8th in the league) with 76 points
(34-24-8). We had only a single win against Berserkers (1-2-3 record) and in the last match of the regular season, we lost 6-7 in shootout against them. That match showed us the weaknesses that our team had and that we had to work on. We had to pick a goalkeeper for the opening game of the playoffs. We had to train more, prepare for the opponent, but our preparation was no different from what we had during the regular season. We just wanted to be better, because we realized that there were playoffs ahead of us, where everyone had to give their best and leave everything on the ice. At that moment, nothing was more important to us than the playoffs and preparation for them. With this motivation, and with the belief that with this attitude we can prove anything in this playoff, we entered the first game of the elimination round. And I believe we can do the best we can.
Following a tragic game 7 loss, Grindle Waters-Johnson is finally willing to share how the Great Falls Grizzlies trained for the SMJHL playoffs.
First, there's film. Of course there is. Listen guys, let's be realistic, you gotta watch your film if you want to win. Grindle watched a lot of film, and noticed some small flaws to his game that he was able to fix during the playoffs. Our coaching staff, god bless them, gave us all individual preparation plans. Wow. props to them. can you believe that?
The big daddy of it all though was conditioning. Bag skates were aplenty, we lived full days at the gym, working to make sure we were big and JACKED and HAD STAMINA for the grueling games ahead. Finally, we wanted to make sure there was still great team cohesion going into the 'loffs, so captain Thomas Hudson hosted a karaoke night. Grindle sang Beyonce, he is a man of culture.
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Aslak Hestnes did a lot of film study to prepare for the SMJHL Playoffs. He’s still very much adjusting to this level as a rookie, and he was able to learn a lot from watching video. While some of it certainly came down to learning opponents’ tendencies to game plan and construct a defense against those playoff foes, it has been just as important to just watch older players, even his teammates, in various situations on the ice and soak up as much information as possible. Especially joining as a mid-season acquisition, there hasn’t been much time to learn, there was no “training camp.” It was pretty much straight out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the very odd saying goes, and Hestnes has simply had to adjust on the fly. In a way, the break before the playoffs was his first chance to really go to school, and he’s particularly eager for the offseason to really study up and prepare for next season.
The Anchorage Armada did more resting than anything else in preparation for their first round playoff series. In Javelin’s opinion they outperformed by a wide margin in the regular season and he was very content with how it went. Unfortunately this over confidence led to a bit of underestimation of the intensity playoff hockey. The Armada did not only perform poorly in the playoffs, they were swept in the first round by the Thunder Bay Walleye. This incredibly disappointing reality hopefully will only inspire the team to take their vengeance upon the league next year.
With a defense entirely made up of rookies the Armada should only get better over the next few seasons. They will be a force to be reckoned with very shortly, if they aren’t already. As a whole the team is on an upper trajectory and Javeline is incredibly excited. How many championships can they achieve? Only time will tell for this talented group.
The Battleborn prepared for the playoffs by creating a hyper realistic simulation, where they were able to clone Ottawa and actually play 3 full games against them, in a perfect recapitulation of the actual games. The games felt all but real, and the Battleborn got some valuable experience for their matchup, coming away with 2 of the fake game wins. However when it was time for the real playoff series, the simulated practice proved to be ineffective, as they lost in 6. Despite dabbling in new technology, Nevada still did their due diligence by preparing the classic way, they studied the film and the matchups, went over new forechecking and Dzone formations, and became familiar with the opposing goalies weak spots. One thing they really focused on was their physical game; as they were a chippy team that liked to play on the edge which there is often a higher tolerance for in the playoffs. The team really focused on the mentality that all checks will be finished, and Kiwi Söderberg-Snooks was ready to drop the gloves and set the tone early on in the series.
Ottawa did what we normally do before a long stretch of road games; we all got together in the locker room after our last practice before the start of the post-season, fired up the grill for some hotdogs, got the local bagpiper to play us a few jolly tunes, and told some jokes to each other over the goofy mishaps that happened during the season. Sure Ottawa may not have finished as strong as we would have wanted, but we had fun for the majority of the season. We took that mentality into the first series of the post-season to ride a wave of hopeful wonder as our fans were able to cheer us on from the stands. This would help propel us through the first round where we defeated Nevada in a hard fought series. Unfortunately OTT would fall to the regular season league leaders in MET after just a quick five games, winning one more than I personally thought was possible.
The Berserkers prepared for the playoffs by playing a couple of playoff games that were later deemed to not count as actual games so we had to play them again. Sadly for a tired boy like BIG SWEG that would prove to be too much for the berserkers to perform at their best, especially Big Sweg who turned out to be catastrophic in the 6 games that actually counted, ending up with a -4 and second to last on the team in points. For coming years we will have to make sure that we actually make the games we play count and not play any unnecessary games thinking that they are actual real games. We are a young team however and will come back stronger than ever, BIG SWEG will train with his team very strong trying to impress the scouts for the SHL draft, as well as getting ready for the new season where we will DOMINATE.
NL prepped a lot for the playoffs, despite a subpar regular season we ended the season strong and had a great record against our coming up opponent Yukon. We practice a lot of defense drills because that was where we seemed to be struggling a lot in the regular season. We were feeling pretty good up 2-1 and having stolen home ice advantage until the great and powerful hockey gods came down to earth and decided that those games didn't exist and we would have to restart the series all over again. We were pretty bummed but got back to training that very same day. Unfortunately it wasn't enough and it seems like some sort of switch was flipped for both teams when we restarted the season and ended up losing in size games Despite having a much better team than last season, we only won one more game, a disappointment for sure. We'll run it back next season bigger faster and stronger than ever to make a deep playoff run.
I think the biggest way that San Diego tried to prepare for the playoffs was just making sure everyone was updated and ready to go. While I absolutely failed in this, and did not actually update, I know that the team was working hard. That said, San Diego is definitely getting ready to tool and have an amazing draft in the off season and have an incredible new set of rookies to follow this S79 group. Most of the team, however, was ready to make sure that there was a lot of hype and cheering as it came to the playoffs themselves. The fact that we were even able to take a game off of the Maine Timber was something that we weren't necessarily expecting, and allowed for a lot of excitement to be generated in the locker room. Despite the lack of wins and the overall rough season, the Tidal are definitely ready for the future and everything that it brings.
My team had a long practice session before the playoffs where we reiterated the strategies we would use against our opponent based on both of our strengths and weaknesses. We got a couple more gym sessions in to bulk us up so that we could hit harder and get past people more when we try to score goals or stop the opponent from scoring goals. We then went on a last team dinner at a great Italian restaurant for team bonding and cohesion. In addition, we asked for some crowd support by organizing a team pep rally outside the stadium the day before our first playoff game and it was a rousing success. It was great to see the support as we entered the stadium in preparation for Game 1 of the first round playoff series. It really made us feel like we could get the job done even more than normal.