Laura's babble

For those of you who were at Breakfast Club last week, you were witness to a bit of history in the making. Keep your eyes peeled this weekend, which is the weekend of “Hockey Day” in case you didn’t know. Fox Sports Detroit will be featuring certain “human interest” stories, and one of them is about your benevolent blogger. Yes, you read that right, hockey fans, we were filmed and then interviewed a few days later about the history-making event coming this summer. Namely, Laura and Michael are getting married, right here on the ice at good ol’ Suburban Ice Farmington Hills. Our gift registry will be at Perani’s, but of course.

When you consider the distraction that is bound to happen when your every move is being filmed and you’ve been mic’ed so that your every utterance is being recorded, it’s amazing how well I was able to do the drills. Joe said, actually, that the pressure of the cameras made me perform a little less awful than usual. One thing that we’re all doing less awfully at is keeping our heads up. Seeing the ice. Not just that little patch next to your feet, but that whole great frozen expanse full of team mates and opponents. So until next time, keep your head up and your eyes on the goal.

The BC Blogger's Return - Week 2 of 2012 Winter Session

Hey there hockey fans. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about my Breakfast Club experiences. Because, well, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to attend the Breakfast Club to have experiences to blog about. But just like falling off a bike or tripping over the paint on the blue line, it was quite easy for me to pick up where I left off.

We’re in week #2 of the winter session, eight more weeks to go. So there’s plenty of time to register if you haven’t already done so. The Wednesday class is fuller than the Thursday class: I should know because I went to both this week so that I could blog with authority. Blogging with authority is right up there with stick intensity, just ask Lyle.

Speaking of asking Lyle, keep your eyes open for a “first ever” this June, hockey fans. I can’t give you any more details, because there aren’t any more details to be had yet, but I promise that something memorable is being planned to occur this June over at Suburban Ice: Farmington. I wonder if Perani’s does wedding registries? Hmmmmm, so many details, so little time.

And paying attention to details and making good use of your time is what the Breakfast Club is all about. At the Wednesday class, we had just shy of thirty skaters and we had exactly three coaches (Lyle, Joe and Scott). Whereas, the Thursday class had just shy of twenty skaters and two coaches (Lyle and Joe). We were also graced with two goalies for each session. With all of the pieces in place, our able and entertaining coaches set about to try to get some details drilled through our heads and into our muscle memories within the time allotted.

Biggest task? Getting over the need to stare at that doggone puck. Feel that puck on your blade! Go ahead, feel it! It won’t bite. Staring at it merely guarantees that you’ll likely have no Earthly idea what is going on anywhere on the ice with, you know, those pesky other details such as your team mates, the opponents, you know, details…

Another detail: handling the puck, not pushing it (ahem, don’t know who does that…) while you’re skating. Why “handle” it and why not push it? Well, because if you’re pushing it, you can’t feel it on the end of your stick anymore. Which makes you then want and/or need to look at the puck. Which then prevents you from being able to know where your team mates and opponents are at. Rinse, lather, repeat: see above.

When you think about it, there’s basically two (just two) ways to move the puck with your stick – on the forehand side, or on the backhand side. That’s it, hockey fans. All that other fancy schmancy “highlights reel” stuff with toe drags and whatnot? Those generally happen because you failed to bring the puck quick and wide to your forehand and/or backhand side to evade the opponent in the first place. So you had to pull a fancy schmancy rabbit outta the hat and hope it would work. Tried and true might sound boring, but tried and true generally are tried and true for good reason.

Skating is kind of an important detail for hockey, too, or so I am told. So we worked on breaking down our stride and lengthening it. Making it more efficient. More power, less effort. Us “more senior” (never say “older”) players need to be able to skate faster without expending needless wasted energy. Arms forward and back, not side to side. Legs moving from center return, out, return, not chop chop chop wide and not chop chop chop narrow either.

And what’s a practice without a hearty opportunity to beat the tar outta each other, I ask? A little one-on-one small ice during the area drills, and (in the case of the Thursday class) a little one-on-one multiples full-ice battles to round out the session at the end.

As I mentioned originally, there is still time to register. What better way to drag your friend into the wonderful vortex of hockey than to buy him (or her) a spot at the Breakfast Club? You don’t have to go out for breakfast together afterwards if you don’t want to. But you can, if you’d like.

BC Blogging

Hey sports fans: did you know that next week is the last week of summer Breakfast Club? I kid you not! And you know I am not the kind of girl to make that kind of stuff up. Rumor has it that the fall season begins in mid-October, so next week appears to be your last chance to get your BC-fix for the next month or so. Crimeny, Lyle should know better than to leave me idle like that. If idle hands are the Devil’s playground, then idle skates are the hockey girl’s downfall. I’ll have to drink less beer and eat less hash browns, lest my tooshie begin to take on giant proportions. Or (gasp!) I’ll have to do something other than hockey to get my required level of exercise in. Yeah, that, too, but I was thinking I might have to even resort to something like maybe running, which is right up there on the excitement scale with watching paint dry.

Few sweat-inducing things in life are as much fun as hockey, and let me tell you, Wednesday morning’s Breakfast Club was anything but boring. That’s what I love about it. Where else could I get to tell Josh that we can go again, one more time baby, and know that he knows that I’m talking about the two-on-two full ice scrimmage? Or how about Thursday, with the return appearance of none other than Godot, …I mean, Joe Jones? And did you know that Lyle had a momentous birthday this week too? Fun and thrills, folks, fun and thrills, and all before most folks are even showered.

BC Blogging

Geez, a girl fails to show one week, fails to blog the following week, and "the man" tries to get all up in her biznizz about it. Who is "the man" you might ask? Ah, that, my hockey fans, is a well-guarded secret. Or should I say "was" - until now. The Great and Powerful Oz may skate with you on Wednesday mornings, but most other days he's just plain ol' Josh, doing the website stuff and who knows what else, and having to put up with my rambling prose and proof-reading for typos.

Speaking of the man, there were five of us non-man types at the Wednesday morning skates. Since I usually go only on Thursdays, I was a bit shocked to find that I had to share "my" cavernous locker room with other players. It would seem, then, that Wednesdays continue to be the days with the highest rate of attendance, today being just shy of two dozen of us. If you ever longed for the intimacy of a more confined group, then, come on over to a Thursday morning and see what you think. That's the nice thing about Breakfast Club - the flexibility to swap between days if your schedule changes and you'd otherwise miss skating. Because (ahem) missing a week of Breakfast Club is generally not gonna help you get any less worse out there on the ice.

OK so back about this up in my biznizz thing. Or, as I learned the hard way, not so much "up" as instead flat of my back during our two-on-one drill.
Good thing he has other redeeming qualities, or Michael would have some 'splainin' to do.

Which is what Scott and Lyle were doing a lot of today - 'splainin'. It does little good to "coach" someone by just barking orders at them. Our coaches actually drill the drills in to our thick noggins by helping us understand "why" it is that this drill has relevance to our game. Knowing the "why" is half the battle. Getting our middle-aged all-star bodies to "do" the "why" is the other half. But having only half is still only having half. Thanks to Scott and Lyle, they're helping us get a "whole" lot better.

Because, at the end of the day, or at the end of a good morning skate (as the case may be), we're all here for one reason: to improve our game. The coaching is what makes the difference. If you just want to keep repeating the same thing over and over in the hope of a different outcome, some might call that the definition of crazy. But if you're looking to improve that same thing a little bit more each time you step on the ice, then the Breakfast Club is the place to be. You never know what you might find out there on the ice. But I know you're most likely to find what you need if you keep your head up and your eyes on the goal.

Summer BC week #5

Alert the media! I got to the rink this morning before both Lyle and Scott. Yes, you read that right: I got to the rink and I was dressed and on the ice this morning before Lyle and before Scott ever set foot (skate?) on the ice.

The fact that neither Lyle nor Scott were even here this morning is immaterial to this otherwise momentous occasion. Please don’t be a fun sponge during my moment of glory, ‘k?

Bryan and Mike led our motley morning crew through a series of passing and skating drills, the likes of which have never been seen by us before. I have been strictly counseled by Mike to make no mention of the fact that we ended our session with a little two-on-two rotating tag-in small ice scrimmaging. So forget I said anything about that having happened.

We warmed up our two goalies with some lane-passing two-on-oh maneuvers, which involved skating out from the goal line area, sweeping across “break out” style to get the pass, crashing in to score, and then kicking off the returning break-out pass. Or at least I think that was what we did, because I didn’t get on the ice until the warm-up was basically over. But, hey, I was still on the ice before either Lyle or Scott (did I mention that already?)

Keeping our committee of the whole intact, we then moved on to some end-to-end skating and passing, working on receiving and passing on both our forehand and backhand, including catching it on the forehand but passing it back on the backhand, and catching it backhand and then passing it forehand.

We then broke in to two groups, one group working on breaking down the elements of our skating, and the other working on a variation of a four-corners passing drill. In both cases, it just went to show us that no matter how long you’ve been playing, there is always room to improve and refine.

All in all, a good little morning for me. After a very long and draining day yesterday, getting up at o’dark thirty to play some hockey was just what the doctor ordered. Not that I wasn’t desperately forlorn over not seeing Lyle or Scott this morning, mind you, but it was kind of nice to get Mike and Bryan’s “take” on an up-beat lively practice this morning. And if you try to start any rumors about what happened, all I can say is that what happens at the Breakfast Club stays at the Breakfast Club.

Summer BC week #4

Hey old-timers, sing along with me, okay? “You can call me Ray, you can call me J, or you can call me Johnny or … but ya doesn’t has to call me Johnson”

Any of you (besides me?) old enough to remember that commercial for Busch Lite from the 70’s?

Why do I bring this old t.v. ad up? Because we all have a nickname. Maybe nobody calls us that anymore, but we’ve all got a nickname. And a story behind the nickname. Just like there’s a story about why you started playing hockey, and more importantly why you started coming to the Breakfast Club.

Maybe you started playing when you were a kid? Since those days of yore, however, you’ve come to realize that you could really use some good “practice ice” besides just your weekly beer league all-star game. Or maybe you started playing as an adult (like me) and never had the chance to attend practices as a kid? You’ll never get much less-worse as a beer league all-star unless you attend some practices.

Either way, the key piece is that you’re here because you know you need the practice. Some of us (ahem), need it more than others. And whooooo doggie, am I a girl in need. Let me tell you! Luckily, I’m getting my fix, thank you very much. Why else would I get up at o’dark thirty, right?

We had a light turn-out of two instructors, one goalie, and twelve skaters Thursday morning. I think the monsoons flooded the railroad tracks or something. Warm-ups began with some puck handling while skating (or so I believe, seeing as I was just swimming in to the rink as class was beginning). We then moved on to warming up the goalie with a two-on-oh! Pass between each other, shooter takes the shot (hence, the designation of being called the “shooter”, I know I know, whoa, dude, counter-intuitive). “Winger” then becomes the defender, and it was a one-on-one back up the ice. After about the second run through the line, Lyle asked me if I knew what I was getting myself in to. Yes, Lyle, yes I do actually, thanks for asking :)

After warm-ups, we split into two groups of six. Scott had the unpleasant task of trying to get us to do a two-on-one drill. How many ways can we NOT do the drill the right way? That, my friends, is a cosmic imponderable best left to the mystics. Us misfits, meanwhile, rotated through our pods so that we all got a chance to be the lead skater, the trailer, and the defender. First winger passes to the second winger who is coming from the middle towards the boards. First winger then leaves the boards, cuts behind the first towards the middle, all the while the defender is trying to position so as to both deny the shooting opportunity while also denying the pass. Sounds easy? Nope, you’re right, we managed to not do this drill right just about every single time. Good thing Scott finds us humorous.

Over in Lyle-land, we were working on tight turns. That would be TIGHT turns, not big tractor trailer turns. But not so tight that it’s a stop-start turn, either. Slow it down there, boy! The ice was sufficiently groovy (grooooovy, maaaaan) to lead one to believe that we came close enough to that sweet spot between power and speed. Although, now that I think of it, Lyle never let us use any pucks during this drill. Hmmmm, I guess walking and chewing gum will come later, perhaps next week. In order to make sure you make it to next week, I would suggest keeping your head up and your eyes on the goal.

Breakfast Club, Summer Week #3

One goalie, eighteen skaters, two instructors, and one sheet of ice. Sounds like a perfect equation for escaping the heat wave, if you ask me. Not that anyone was asking me. Well, I did get asked something, and I gladly said "yes", but that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about here is hockey. Calling it "hockey" and making it actually be hockey are sometimes two different things. That's why we haul outta bed at o'dark thirty. To make ourselves look more like hockey players every week. Even if the scouts will never be calling us.

We warmed-up our goalie with a leading and following skater, two nice low shots on net, which then continued as a one-on-one down the returning lane back to the other end. Defensively, the object of the game, always as well as the object of this drill, was to maintain a proper gap. Too much of a gap, and you're just giving the ice away. And no one, especially me, likes to just give it away. If there's too little of a gap, you're bound to get beat if the offensive opponent is even the slightest bit faster at skating forward than you are at skating backwards. And no one, especially me, likes getting beaten either. Sounds pretty demanding, and yet divinely simple, all wrapped up in a nice neat little package, doesn't it?

When we broke into our two groups, Lyle had us working on quick "touch" passes and Ryan had us working on one-on-one battles. In the one-on-one, the players were starting from cross-ice ends (sides?) of the blue line, so defensively the object was to head-off the puck carrier as quickly and effectively as possible. And offensively, the object was to get that scoring opportunity shot. Which might mean skating like a bee-line and crashing the net, but might also mean using changes in speed and direction to get the defender to over-commit. Working on quickness versus anticipation, it's all in the positioning, hockey fans.

In the touch pass drills, the emphasis was on being quiet. Not because Lyle's coffee hadn't quite kicked-in yet and he was feeling a bit groggy still. Nope, quiet because less noise means you're receiving the pass instead of risking bouncing that puck back off your stick. Square up to the incoming pass, hands away from your body, stick blade flat on the ice, with just enough downward pressure to avoid having the pass "ooze" out from under your stick, while allowing the puck to be cushioned to deaden the recoil. Sounds easy?

In between all of this, I think Lyle was hoping for the part of Coach Herb in the remake of "Miracle", because we did a whole lotta stops and starts. Stops and starts. Stops and starts. There's nothing quite like mini-ladders when it's already 85 degrees at 7am and so humid that you can see the air molecules. I'll blame the stops and starts on Ryan, seeing as Scott was no where to be found (or blamed), and running us into the ground is otherwise so uncharacteristic of Lyle (cough, cough...). Joe remains on the injured reserves, so he's safe from me blaming him for the moment as well. Credible deniability. Or incredible agreeability. Take your choice. Either way, make sure you're got your head up and your eyes on the goal.

BC Week #2

Yeah, yeah, class starts at 6:30am. So? I’d rather be 30 minutes late than not there at all.

Sigh… sometimes, life gets in the way of my hockey, what can I say?

I’m not sure what happened before 7am, but I do know that after 7am, we were indeed working on getting in each other’s way. Specifically, one-on-one half ice. Carry it up and over the red line, try to score. Defensively, back check so you can quickly control your gap. For the purposes of this drill, no neutral zone neutralizations, but normally you’d want to keep that player from ever getting in the zone. In the case of this drill, all of the play was designed to happen between the blue line and the top of the circles. I kinda like it when I know where all my play is supposed to happen; presume that you do, too.

The other thing we worked on in that last half (or, in my case, the only half) of class was stops and starts. Giving away to that loss of control was a tough thing for this hockey girl, a very tough thing. Scott kept trying to get me to just use the outside edge of my trailing leg for stopping, but my fear of splatting got the best of me. Inside edge of the leading leg? Noooooo problem, can do it in my sleep with both hands tied behind my back. So why do I lack confidence in myself? Hmmmm, very philosophical for a hockey practice. I never knew two inches of ice could be that deep.

I must give thanks to my random boy victim of the morning, whatever the heck your name was. During the one-on-ones, we had an odd number of players (I was reminded that things were perfectly fine until I, the odd ball, showed up) (anyway…), and so I doubled-up running the drill with Terri and then jumping back in line really quick to double-shift the drill with my dear random unnamed boy. Kinda like Cedar Point and running off the ride and getting right back in line, eh?

Will I double-up and go both Wednesday and Thursday? Will I get there on time regardless of which day we’re talking about? Will I go at all? And I wonder if there will be coffee after practice next week? These are all imponderables, to be honest, and lots of life could possibly get in the way between now and then. But I do know that knowing I get a little less bad every single week is what keeps me coming back for more. Insatiably odd, yep, that’s me. With my head up and my eyes on the goal…