September 01, 2007

His Own Goalie Coach


In the spring of 2007, while watching a Blizzard game, a goalie coach was extremely impressed with Devin's play and asked if he could work with him. Having been a goalie himself since the age of 6 and Devin never having "formal" training, adding coach Mike was a great asset to an already strong coaching staff, not only for the goalie but the entire team. With coach Mike's instruction (his dad continued to work with him along side coach Mike), Devin was now learning the finer points of goal tending. According to his coach, Devin only required fine tuning as his athletic ability and talent were already way above most goalies at the Pee Wee level. For quite some time Devin was getting noticed by many of the 95 coaches around the state and was asked by several of them to try out for their teams. Though there were teams that were better than the BC Blizzard, it was decided that a lateral move for Devin would not be to his benefit and until he made the move to AAA would remain with this team. It was during this time that Devin was invited by the Honeybaked AAA team to come down to a practise. During this practise session the Honeybaked team did mock scrimmages by rotating the players to level the playing field. Of the five scrimmages played that day, Devins team won four of the scrimmages. This gave us an indication that with practise, he could hold his own at the AAA level. A second practise visit, to include dryland training, was requested by the Honeybaked coach; however, Devin did not have a good day and became frustrated at the amount of pucks he was letting in. When he did not dress for dryland, the Honeybaked coach did not invite him back. Though this was a disapointment to Devin, it was a good lesson for him to learn................