It has been an up and down season so far for the male U18 Pembina Valley Hawks, but coach Jeff Andrews feels the team is well positioned to make a push in the second half in the new year.
Prior to three key games just before the holiday break, the Hawks had been in seventh place at 15-9-0-1 for 31 points, which had them five and six points behind Eastman and Southwest and just one point ahead of Parkland at press time last week.
“We’re happy with where we are,” said Andrews, who noted though having a little bit of a sour taste when the Hawks dropped a game against the Winnipeg Thrashers despite having had the lead before losing it in the third period.
“We also kind of got bit by the injury bug there and lost some important guys, and as a result, we just couldn’t hold the lead down the stretch.
“Overall though, I’m happy with our performance so far,” said Andrews, who suggested they have been competitive overall aside from three games against the Winnipeg Bruins where they “kind of laid an egg” and allowed 21 goals.
“At the end of the day, the overall results thus far have been pretty positive, I would say. We’re right in a place we want to be to take a real hard run at it in the second half.”
Andrews highlighted what he has liked so far and where he sees the team needing to make improvements.
“For me, the real bright spot is our ability in playing five-on-five and playing hard and being a hard team to play against.
“Another bright spot would be our power play, which was sitting at first place in the league, so that’s really important and something that we have prided ourselves in being good at,” Andrews said. “To see those results I think is really encouraging.
“I think the biggest thing to work on would be our penalty kill. It’s not where it needs to be, and we have tried a variety of different things and continue to work on that aspect of our game. It’s something we need to be better at,” he said. “We’ve just decided we’re going to try to simplify and see if that yields results.
“I think another area we need to improve is our discipline, like not taking penalties. If we are going to take penalties, they need to be from preventing scoring chances and things like that.”
Andrews believes the team has the potential to move up in the standings and progress further.
“Everybody ahead of us in those next three spots are all in striking distance … so we’ve kind of eyeballed getting in the top four as being a big goal for our hockey team.
“We’ve got lots of work to do … although I am optimistic, I don’t want to be too optimistic in the sense that we still have some work to do, and we still have some things we need to take care of.”
