Sorry, it has been a little while since I last wrote in the blog. The season is well underway, and we have been very busy getting the boys ready for the first regular-season game this Friday night against St. Thomas.
A quick update on how things have been going. We started the season on October 8th with our first practice. We had 28 players come out for the team and decided to keep all of them on the team. This was nice as we did not have any cuts for the first time in my 11 years here at SJU. All of the guys looked good and they will all have a positive impact on this team.
On the first Saturday of the season, we had a great team-building activity that started out at Saint John’s at 7am. The guys came together and we did a lot of fun activities that helped the players get to know each other, while working on our communication and leadership. This also happened to be the same day as the Johnnie/Tommie football game and I had a GREAT time watching the football team knock off the Tommies later that day.
On Monday we named our captains: Captain Cole Souto and his assistants, Evan Okeley, Joe Chitwood and Matt Colford. https://gojohnnies.com/news/2018/10/18/johnnies-announce-2018-19-hockey-captains.aspx
On Tuesday, we played an exhibition game against the Granite City Lumberjacks. The Lumberjacks are a tier III junior hockey team that play out of Sauk Rapids. We have three players on our current roster that played for Granite City, so it was a fun night for those guys to play against their old team. We came away with an 8-1 win and we had eight different players score a goal. We learned a lot in this game and it will definitely help us moving forward into this weekend’s games. https://gojohnnies.com/news/2018/10/4/sju-hockey-adds-local-exhibition-game-oct-16.aspx
We start our regular season this weekend at the MIAC Showcase at the Schwann Super Rink in Blaine. The first game is against St. Thomas 7pm on Friday. We follow that up with a day off on Saturday before we play again against Bethel 3:30pm on Sunday. For those of you that are able to come out and watch some hockey this weekend, the MIAC is a great chance to see some good hockey. There will be three games going on at a time on all three days this weekend. The Johnnies play Friday and Sunday, but there are also quality MIAC games going on Saturday evening.
I am very excited about the start of this season and getting to see the guys play against another team. The preseason always gets a little long and we are all itching to play a real game. We have an older team this season with a lot of our core players returning. Of those returners, eight of them are seniors. This is going to be their final chance at a MIAC championship and you can definitely see their focus throughout the start of the season.
I hope to see you at one of the games this weekend and thanks for following our program!
Go Johnnies!
