It’s so frustrating when you “play down” to someone else’s level, isn’t it? You always want to perform your best no matter who you are playing, but that’s so much harder to do against a weaker opponent. That’s what happened to my team this morning at our girls hockey tournament game. We managed to squeeze out a tie, but it wasn’t pretty. Here’s what we should have done to avoid “playing down” to their level…
1) Never take an opponent lightly:
We have already played this team 3 times this year and know that we are a better team. We have more skill, more depth and more experience. But every time we get out on the ice with them, we take our performance down two notches. This morning, we dominated the majority of the play, but a few unlucky bounces and a few bad decisions put us down 2-0. They may not be great, but they are good enough to capitalize on our mistakes.
2) Focus on your own game:
When you are playing a weaker team and you are struggling to put it all together, it’s easy to get frustrated. And it’s even easier to start looking for excuses.
“I can’t score because the goalie is so out of position that she makes the lucky save.”
“They are so much slower than what we are used to that they get in the way of our plays.”
“Insert your favorite excuse here”.
There are always going to be bad teams, weak opponents, crappy refs and horrible ice conditions.
You have absolutely no control over any of these things.
You have to stay focused on the only thing you have control over - your attitude and work ethic.
Just because your opponent isn’t as skilled or talented as you are, it doesn’t mean that they are just going to roll-over and let you win. You know that they want nothing more than to knock off the favorite, and will kick, claw and fight their way through the game.
Stay focused on working hard and staying positive. Outwork, outhustle and outsmart your opponent. Being better on paper does nothing for you out on the ice. You’ve always got to want it more in order to win. Don’t get frustrated if the goalie is robbing you blind or they score a lucky goal. You know that you are the better team and by focusing on playing your game, you’ll be able to show it.
I would give my team a 3 out of 10 on our performance this morning. We managed to come back for the tie, but we really should have blown them out of the water. We can at least double or triple that rating for our next game.
What strategies are you going to use to make sure that you play a 10 out of 10 against a weaker opponent?
Share your thoughts and ideas below.
Our team is by far the best team in our league, as a result we are the team that everyone wants to beat. We know that the other teams coach doesn’t need to get their team motivated because they are playing the Avalanche.We have the harder game to play because if we don’t play our best every game then we’re going to be out worked all season long.
Our team has to go out everygame as if we’re playing Kelowna, our rivals who we only play at tournaments and provincials. For goalies in games against weak opponents where we don’t get many shots it’s sometimes hard to stay focused and in the game. One tip I have for staying in the game is whenever there’s a faceoff on the other side of the ice do some sort of drill, post to post then butterfly slide to stop a shot from the slot then recover into your stance in line with where the faceoff was, as if it were in your own end and you were playing it. My second tip, if you have a strong mental game and can visualize well, you don’t necessarily have to do movements at every faceoff, but you visualize yourself in the play moving around and you think about the feeling you get in your legs during a hard game, tiredness but still full of energy.
I used the second one last night at my game because I wasn’t getting many shots, but the puck was in my end quite a bit so I was do my skating movements so my legs were being used. I just visualized myself making saves in different scenarios to keep my senses and reflexes awake for when that shot does come.
During that game I found myself losing focus and thinking about other stuff even when the puck was in my end so I just said to myself, focus, wheres the puck okay going around the net and then I just kept my eyes on the puck and aware of the players around me.
You just have to try out different things to see what works for you to keep you focused and during what type of game. Does physically moving your body help or mentally moving your body?
I completely understand what you mean. This year we are on an a team earlier in the year we had really picked up our skills, then we played a st. catherines b team in exhibition and beat them but we played awful. We skated so much slower and definately werent in it because we were just expecting to win. This past weekend we played markham and we hadnt lost to them yet, so we went in thinking it would be the same as usual a close game but we would come out on top. However we lost focus and control of our game when they got a few lucky goals and took a strong lead.
What should we do to stop this from happening again
thanks
-Megan
What my teammates do is visualize that the game they’re about to play is against the hardest team, for us Kelowna. You go out hard knowing that you can’t let the other team even think that they have a chance to upset the top team in the league.
We just about had that today, our team did not start off well at all. We beat this team 15-1 during a tournament, but they scored early on to make it 1-0, we didn’t end up scoring until half way through the first, at the second intermission we were only up 3-1. By the look on our coaches face at the intermission our entire team understood if we didn’t dominate the third period we would have the worst practice tomorrow. We ended the game 6-1 but that was by far our worst game yet.
We under estimated them way too much, I think we’ve learnt a message.