The NHL Grind
Eli had hockey practice on Tuesday. He had hockey practice tonight. He has a game on Saturday. He has practice on Sunday. He has practice on Tuesday. He has practice on Thursday. Then he plays in a tournament from Friday-Monday.It's house hockey on steroids.
The "non-travel league" development team he's on has phenomenal coaches, one of whom had a very nice minor league career. He's also incredibly thorough and meticulously organized. It's completely ludicrous to have this level of instruction down here, but somehow we have it anyway.
I got some footage of Eli in goal tonight, and I'm going to get more on Sunday so that I can share it all with you next week. I saw that little YouTube video I made of him in goal last year, and it made me laugh because he has improved so much since then.
He was doing an up-down drill tonight where his coach would shoot along the ice, forcing him into the butterfly, then very quickly launch a high shot that required him to be upright to stop it. It's hard to do that on carpet (try it), but doing it on skates is much, much tougher. He was bouncing up and down almost instantly, though, and there were parents around me who were laughing because it was just ridiculous how fast he was.
<< Home