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Saturday, September 01, 2012

Clippers 8 Dogs 2, LIVE at Salmon Fest all day, Dogs at Caps tonight...

Well....Where to begin?

First off - for those that don't know me, I'm usually captain positive. I always focus on the positives and look at things from that angle. It's just really tough to find anything out of last night's game to say though. I guess the only good thing is that it was Exhibition, and in doesn't count. Thank goodness for that I guess!

A tough game through and through for the Dogs. While the score was the same as the game last Sunday in Nanaimo, in my opinion the game wasn't.

The Dogs goalies were hung out to dry with too many odd man rushes to count. There was way more than one instance from way more than one or two when players where someone get caught up ice and/or caught up the puck, and then NOT backcheck HARD like a guy that was caught up ice and like a guy who had given the puck away.


Maybe everyone is a bit tired, maybe everyone is done with preseason, maybe the game was lost and what did it matter?


One thing "old" Dogs know, and that the new guys might need to figure out in a big big hurry is what kind of city they play in and what the Port Alberni mentality is. This is a blue collar work hard/play hard town. Of course the fans don't want you to lose games. At the same time they are smart enough to know you quite simply can't win them all, so they accept the fact that you win some and you lose some.  Just give them an honest effort.


What they will absolutely NOT TOLERATE is anything less than your BEST EFFORT. If you want to win this crowd over - you had best bring your work boots every night, and you had best NEVER EVER quit. That is - quit on a game, quit on a play, quit anything! Unacceptable around these parts. These people work hard for their money, and in turn put that money right back out to be entertained by your efforts fellas so you had best give them an honest one.


Where is this going you ask? It's going to the fact that too many guys seemed to quit last night. I hate watching "my team" lose as much as the next guy, but my blood boils when I see guys pulling the chute and checking out or never checking in, which is how it looked at times last night.

It IS just exhibition and they are just a bunch of kids, so maybe this is way to extreme to write! However, this is only going to get HARDER. Daily, weekly, monthly, it gets harder before it gets easier!

Here's hoping the Dogs can have a nice bounce back effort tonight in Duncan. I'm contemplating travelling to Duncan to provide updates, at the same time the Caps twitter feed has been killin' it so I might enjoy a night off with the fam at Salmon Fest that missed last night!




Time for me to run - I'll be LIVE from Salmon Fest on 93.3 The Peak FM from 10am today until 2pm.

Not sure what kind of roster the Dogs will have tonight due to the brawl last night, I will keep you posted!

Hammer

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said Hammer....way to early to be jumping off cliff...but...experience has taught me that its not the fact that you lose but the way you lose that matters AND quitting on a play,game,team is a "CHARACTER" trait that is easy to identify..hard to change....hope I'm wrong and good luck DOGS

Anonymous said...

Excellent comments! Hope the players read it!!

Hammer said...

Well said too!