When shortcuts turn into longcuts
The Junior A Crushers have a little break from home ice over the next couple weeks, and it might be a good time for them to do a little road-trippin’, with bus rides to Valley, Campbellton and Miramichi over the next couple of weeks before their next game at home on Nov. 14.
Although, coach Mike Danton said it doesn’t matter where they’re playing, if they can't stick to the game plan.
It’s not unfair to say they’re spinning their wheels: just past the quarter-pole of the season, the Crushers haven’t won two straight games since early September (they haven’t lost two in a row either since the early part of the schedule, either, so it could be worse); they can’t figure out who the starting goalie is – and maybe they won’t anytime soon – since neither of the goaltenders have seized the No. 1 role.
Their most recent game saw the Yarmouth Mariners put a 6-2 beating on the Crushers at the Pictou County Wellness Centre, putting it away with a three-goal second period in which the Crushers needed binoculars to locate the Yarmouth net (five shots on goal in that period, and it seemed worse than that).
The day after that debacle, the team “had a come-to-Jesus meeting”, said coach Mike Danton, to try to clear the air about competing harder and sticking to game plans. Too many guys take it upon themselves to do some freelancing, he said, and that usually doesn’t work.
All that said, if the season ended today they’d be in the playoffs, and a lot of teams are still finding their way in the early part of this Maritime Junior Hockey League season, still trying to get better, trying to figure out where they’re at and where they’re going.
There’s no need to hammer away at the panic button. They just seem a little disjointed right now, and maybe that’s partly due to a slew of suspensions, illness and injuries to key players (their game Nov. 2 against the Valley Wildcats should see them with their full lineup for the first time this season).
A winning streak, borne of consistent effort and production – because that’s usually the only way – sure would help.
(ALMOST) NON-SPORTS THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK:
You ever notice that when you take shortcuts because it’s easy, if often makes things harder in the long run?
It said in the media that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seemed humbled this week by his party’s failure to secure a majority government in the Oct. 21 federal election. That’s probably a good approach for him to take, seeing as how Canadians sent him a message that he ought to do better.
My apologies to Central Nova MP Sean Fraser: he did, in fact, play high school basketball (go Blue Eagles!), which I’d forgotten about knowing, so he is a sports guy.
It’s entirely possible that myself, or this other guy who used to hang around the office, took his picture when he was playing basketball at East Pictou back in the very early 2000s, in that tiny gymnasium where, if you tumbled out ofbounds during a game, you might go face-first into a wall. It kept the players on their toes, I imagine.
A few days after the election, I had a chance to interview Fraser’s predecessor, former Central Nova MP Peter MacKay, and we spent the first few minutes talking about football.
MacKay is a Buffalo Bills fan, which I’m okay with because they’re one of the few NFL teams that I actually don’t hate.
Oh, and MacKay someday might be an MP again, but we’ll let that idea mellow for another year or two. No sense using those bullets when you don’t have to.