January 27

Well tonight was one of the most difficult nights as a coach for the Lumberjacks in my 11 years. Losing sucks! Losing badly sucks even worse!! We have hit rock bottom tonight. We were down to 12 skaters and were playing the top ACHA Division I team in the country. We knew from the start it might be a tough night, and it was. There are many questions to be asked and what ifs for our season this past year. Being the leader of this program I have to learn from these situations this year and do better from these lessons. As a coach the worst is when you feel you have lost your team and they are not responding to you and trying for you. I have felt this is true a couple of times tonight, and the score indicated that. It is very disheartning when these players have been beat bad more than once.  Sometimes it has been becasue they did not play hard or stuck with our game plan, but a lot of it is the competition. Bottom line is some of these defeats are because we are playing teams that are that much better than us, much better. We need to find that competition level that makes it good for both teams. This year it was not there and I take responsibility for that. You ask yourself are you doing enough? What more can we do? Why did we have so many guys bail on our team? Tonights game and last weekend in Kenora it was Men versus Boys, and we were intimidated, and short staffed, not to mention badly outskilled. I have told the boys and I truly believe we are not as bad as a team as our record has indicated or as the scores have been, and I think we are going to still have success.  What will that success be? The past month have taught me not to take things for granted and to be thankful what you have and what you had.  I have coached many great people and we have some on our team currently. I am lucky to be a Lumberjack, now we have to get our program back on track and make current, former, and future Lumberjacks  proud to be a part of the Lumberjack family. The only way to get out from our rock bottom tonight is to work. Lets get the hard hats on and work boots and get better everyday.