It's not what happens to us, but how we react to what happens to us that matters. We were beaten more ways than one last night, and rather than attack our opponents on the score board, we made poor decisions resulting in 25 minutes in penalties.
What's worse, we celebrated these poor decisions by making noise and talking about physical retribution. The WMH PW Reps are a better team than this, and if we are to see any success this season, we will have to figure out a way to channel our anger into energy, and use it where it best suits our team.
As coaches, we can only do so much to help our team improve. We encourage them to make a decision, commit and live with it, and if it's the wrong decision, then we use it as a learning experience. But once they hit the ice, the game is theirs.
It might be hard to remember, but there were some positives last night. Spencer, for example, made some great saves. There were a number of good scoring opportunities. Unfortunately they were completely overshadowed by the things we didn't do well. Last nights 'big' mistakes are not to be celebrated, nor will they be tolerated. There are 20 or so people directly connected to this team, all of who made a conscious decision to be here. I would expect better of this team, but more importantly, we should expect better of ourselves.
The good news is that we can only go up from here, so I am asking the boys to put on their thinking caps and work with us to figure out how we make the climb out.
Today is a new day, and our season starts now.