Blazers looking for discipline

From The Daily News of Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007. . . .

Were the Five Man Electrical Band to take a look at the Kamloops Blazers’
recent games, it would break into song:
“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.”
The WHL team, which is at home to the Medicine Hat Tigers tonight (Interior
Savings Centre, 7 o’clock), appears to be searching for its personality,
like a hungry man looking for dinner.
The Blazers have surrendered 13 power-play goals in their last five games.
They have faceed 35 power-play opportunities in those five games. They have
been involved in 16 fights in those five games, most of them in the third
period’s latter stages. . . .
Indeed . . . “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.”
Greg Hawgood, who has been the interim head coach for almost five weeks now,
recognizes what is happening.
“Discipline is an issue,” he said after Monday’s practice. “We can’t be
sitting in the box 10 or 12 times a game and expect to have a chance to win.
That puts a lot of pressure on our penalty killing.”
One of the results of this erosion in discipline is that a team that started
7-1 under Hawgood is 2-5 in its most-recent outings. Now, Hawgood said, the
coaching staff has to make sure frustration doesn’t set in and take control.
“The easy thing is to get frustrated,” he explained. “I did that against
Chilliwack and made a rookie mistake. When I had a chance to think about it,
I probably should have called a timeout and settled myself and the team.
It’s part of the learning curve.”
That was on Dec. 1 when the Blazers, in the process of losing 6-2 to the
visiting Chilliwack Bruins, lost their composure in the third period.
Hawgood ended up getting tossed and later was fined $500 by the WHL.
“Experienced people make mistakes,” said Hawgood who, despite having no
coaching experience, was hired Nov. 7 to replace Dean Clark, one of the
WHL’s most-experienced coaches, “and I had four or five times to shovel the
driveway that Sunday after the game and think about it. If I had it to do
over again . . .
“It stems from the team (not) playing well and to a man we’re getting
frustated with the linesmen, the referees, ourselves . . . and everything
seems to build up. We’re not focusing our energy on the proper places.
Starting from me down, we have to focus on the task at hand and not worry
about the job that other people are doing.”
The officiating, he said, “is what it is and they’re never going to change
their minds.”
One other thing that has Hawgood concerned is the way in which his club
starts games. It has scored the game’s first goal just nine times in 32
games.
“Sometimes,” Hawgood said, “our energy is not there, for whatever reason.
The energy and the slow start is something we would like to get our finger
on and figure out why that is the case at the beginning of games.”
After tonight, the Blazers will meet the Cougars in Prince George on Friday
and Saturday, then they will break for Christmas, returning Dec. 27 to face
the Giants in Vancouver.
The break, Hawgood said, can’t hurt.
The players “have a pretty full plate on a daily basis with school and
community service and stuff like that,” he said. “You’d like to think that
time away from the rink is good to heal the body and the mind, and it gives
you an opportunity to realize how much fun it is being here and playing for
the team.
“It makes you hungry again and you get to recharge your batteries for the
second part of the season.”
JUST NOTES: With LW Ivan Rohac (Slovakia) and RW Juuso Puustinen (Finland)
at national junior team tryout camps, the Blazers will have just one scratch
tonight and it likely will be a defenceman. . . . Kamloops is expected to
bring in C Brendan Ranford, 15, for two weekend games against the Cougars in
Prince George. Ranford, the 15th pick in the 2007 bantam draft, is playing
midget AAA in Edmonton. He won’t be available after Christmas, however, so
the Blazers are likely to take a look at F Matt Riley and F Richard
Vanderhoek when play resumes after the break. Riley was the 67th pick in
2006, with Vanderhoek going 122nd. . . . Walter Nachbaur, the father of
Tri-City Americans head coach Don Nachbaur, died Sunday night in Prince
George. Nachbaur has been in Prince George with his father. In his absence,
general manager Bob Tory and assistant coach Terry Virtue have been running
the bench. Such was the case last night when the Americans beat the visiting
Swift Current Broncos 3-2.