Here is your week four Team Shuster Update.

The Good the Bad and the Exhausted!

After our successful trip to Brandon, the team was excited and ready to take the ice in St. Paul. We started out very well and won our first 3 games and reached the qualifying game in the A bracket! It looked as if we were poised to qualify in our second event in a row!

Now for the bad. We’re not exactly sure why as of yet, but we ended up losing three straight games. Yikes! We just didn’t play as sharply as we had been. Our front two players just didn’t set things up very well and put undue pressure on our other players to pick things up. For me personally, I have found that hosting an event and playing in it can be an exhausting exercise and I might need to rethink that process.

We were all very disappointed with our finish and have been discussing some cause and effect and how to ensure that we don’t end up in that situation again.

On the very positive side, I think that we have all agreed that this season is a long process for us and it is still very early.

So you’re probably thinking we’ll take some time off now, right? WRONG! We’re heading right back to Manitoba this weekend! This will definitely be our toughest test of the year. The Myers Norris Penny Prairie Classic in Portage La Prairie, MB. This event is by far the deepest field of teams we will see. With a list of players that reads as a who’s who of former World and Olympic champions and players we’ll have our work cut out for us. We’ll need to get back to working together and staying positive to earn our way to the money round here. As usual, you can follow our progress on-line.

Thanks again and wish us luck.

John Benton