Devin Didomete - Blog 4

Hey Devils fans!!

Let me start off by congratulating Max Faulkner on an amazing week, this guy is on fire it seems like anything he shoots finds its way to the back of the net. In all of my years of professional hockey I have never witnessed a player get back to back hattricks, it was simply amazing to watch.

Last week was a very unusual week, with the ice being painted we did not get a chance to skate from after our game Sunday until we hit the ice for warm ups in Hull on Thursday. We got off to a very slow start in Hull, and although we came back to tie it up and eventually take the lead, we ended up shooting ourselves in the foot and made some errors that eventually cost us the game. On paper we know that we are a better team than Hull, but at the same time knew we couldnt underestimate them because those are the games we need to make sure we get two points in. After the game, looking around the room at the guys faces you could see the disgust and how let down we were, any good team I have played on every guy hates losing and takes each lose to heart and thats the feeling I got from the guys after the game on Thursday.

G gave us a day off on Friday, due to the fact we got in awfully late from Hull and understood that even thou we lost a game we should have won that we needed our rest, we had a quick skate saturday afternoon to loosen the legs up and prepare for our game against the Clan' on Sunday.

Again on Sunday we came out a little flat and didnt get the kind of start we were hoping for, our team has a never give up mentality and we ended up battling back to tie things up again and take it into shootout. For the second straight sunday in a row we were even through 3 shooters and had to go to sudden death penalty shots. We ended up coming up short and losing a game we probably should have won. Anytime you get 50 plus shots on the opposing team you are normally going to win, unfortunately for us we ran into a hot goalie and couldn't get the extra point we wanted. It was definately a disappointing week but having said that we did get 2 out of 4 points, and by no means are down on ourselves. No hockey team ever won a championship by winning the first four games of the year, it is a long season and we need to recognize where we are weak and work out those kinks out of our game so we can get on the right track.

There is a saying that I have kept in the back of my head over the years and that saying is "you can never get too high and you can never be too low" sure this isn't the record we wanted after the first four games of the year, but we need to stay positive, push each other in practice, and do all the little things that make good teams good. I am very confident in every guy in our room and know that we will be contending for a championship this year, we have character like I have never seen before and every guy wants to win as much as the guy sitting next to him.

We have a huge weekend coming up and I am extra excited to go into Coventry and steal the two points from them and shut up all the "mutants", Sunday will also be a great test for us, as Nottingham is supposed to be one of the league favorites, I can ensure you G will have us prepared, and it is our job to execute on the game plan provided to us!

........and one last thing, I asked Franny to put me in the shootout last week and he said that we are trying to score goals not warm the goalie up! The man knows what he is talking about haha!!!

Cheers