It has been a while since I last blogged about the trip, but the Tokyo area moved at such a fast pace that it was hard to find the time. I will give you an update on the games and some of the activities that we did in Tokyo.

Hockey Games:

We played three games in Tokyo. The level of the games improved each game with the first game on Thursday, the second on Saturday and the final game on Sunday. We won the game on Thursday 3-2. We didn’t play very well in this game, but there was still some jet lag for some of the guys and a lot of rust from not playing for so long. We won the second game 5-3 and played much better. The final game we lost 2-3 and ran out of gas. I’m pretty sure they had a plan because the third team we played was pretty good and we were all exhausted. It was tough for the guys because we would tour Tokyo all day then get back to the hotel pack up and go to the rink. I was impressed at the effort the guys put in each game as I was exhausted simply standing on the bench after the long day.

Overall, the hockey was better than expected. The Japanese players are great skaters and they have pretty good skill. The biggest difference was the size and strength. One of the most interesting things was that after the first game the coaches of the better teams asked that we play more physical because they wanted to have that experience. The games got pretty rough the second and third games and the SJU players got better with the contact in the games. I should mention however that we also started taking a lot of penalties once there was more contact. We probably had five penalties to their one. The officiating was not the greatest, but they did their best. Finally, we outshot the Japanese 2-1 or more in every game, but I thought the goalies for their teams were very good. We had a hard time scoring. Especially in the third game where we out shot them 46-26 and lost 2-3.

The hockey was a great experience and I really enjoyed seeing their level of hockey here.