It hasn’t been a banner season so far for the female U18 Pembina Valley Hawks, but coach Matt Victor remains optimistic.
He feels the team has made good progress and that there is good potential for them to make a real push in the new year when play resumes.
“I’m quite happy with the progress that we have seen from the start to now,” Victor said. “I feel like the group has followed the process and believed in it, and we’re making big strides in our game.
“Ultimately, we’re striving for February and March where the real season starts, and I feel like we’re on an upswing, and we’re quite excited for it.”
Before a pair of games just before the holiday break, the Hawks had been in seventh place at 6-8-0-1 for 13 points, but at that point they were just one point back of the Winnipeg Avros and Central Plains and three behind Yellowhead.
Victor is encouraged especially by the fact the team has been very competitive and had close games with the top teams in the league.
“The level of parity we’re seeing in the league, it’s really anyone’s chance,” he said. “From third place to seventh, it’s a matter of a few points here and there. The top two teams are kind of separating themselves, and that’s something we really expected going into the season.
“Recently, we played the Winnipeg Ice and played a great game. It was a tight 2-1 game with them,” he noted. “The nice thing I see with that, and going back to our group, is that we can play with these teams, and we can beat these teams … if we play to our identity and our tactics and our systems … we keep pushing that with them.
“We haven’t gotten some outcomes. We’ve kind of given some games away, but I think that happens with any team where you play well enough to win but you don’t get the outcome,” he said. “It’s about the process. It’s about the belief and really buying in, and I think our group is doing that now.”
Looking ahead, he sees that they will have a tough stretch early in the new year with some tough teams, but he remains hopeful.
“Regardless of the outcome, I think it just keeps building us up. It helps, playing these top teams, in really nailing down the details that we need to be successful, and I think it’s going to help us moving forward.
“There’s always opportunity … everybody makes the playoffs, so it’s how far can you bring your group, bring in the trust and the belief that we can do it and potentially hitting our stride.”
Victor highlighted positives that have stood out as well as what the team needs to work on moving ahead.
“I feel like over our last seven or eight games, our team has really played to our identity,” he said. “The identity we kind of brought forward with our group is the compete, the grit and just never quit.
“With that never quit attitude, they’ve proven it to themselves that they can do it,” he said. “I think the big thing here for us is to find that consistency. It’s there, but to continue with that consistency. So that’s something I really want to push for the rest of the way.
“I feel like we really need to work on our game away from the puck. I think that’s going to be a big thing that we need to work on,” he concluded. “It’s about being in the right places, making things hard when we don’t have the puck so that we can create turnovers.”
