I have a hunch about your average graphic designer. And maybe it’s not so much a hunch about graphic designers as it is about people in general but my hunch is that, typically, we are insecure. Whether we’ve done reputable work or not, we’d like to believe that we’re the best at what we do… You know, if we could just get that one contract to prove it. And what happens is that you become too scared to try because you don’t want to fail and have to face the fact that…

Actually, You Suck

A 20th century philosopher by the name of Homer Simpson once said, “No matter how good you are at something, there’s always about a million people better than you.” If you want to prove that to yourself, go tour Behance.net or Dribbble.com and you’ll quickly come across hoards of designers whose skills will intimidate you and cause you to ponder whether or not you’ve made the right decision becoming a graphic designer.

Okay, You Don’t Actually Suck

What's more inspirational than a handful of tree?

Now that I’ve broken you down, it’s time to build you back up. While you don’t suck, don’t fall into the trap of feeling shamed because someone is better. There will always be someone better. Get over it. The good news is there’s plenty of work out there and the German guy you just discovered on Behance who can create photorealistic art using just the brush tool in Photoshop won’t be stealing your clients. Nor will he be monopolizing even his hometown. So worry first about serving your clients before the competition. And don’t be intimidated by these excellent designers; Be inspired! If you can look at what they do and reverse engineer some of it and become 25% the designer that they are, you’ll probably find that locally, suddenly, you’re a very good designer.

The biggest benefit of following these designers is that the more you explore their portfolios, the more you expand your knowledge of what is possible. And not only possible but achievable! By you! Because you can usually find a tutorial that will teach you how to do it.

Just One Last Note About “The Competition”

I said at the beginning that I had a “hunch” about graphic designers being insecure and over-competitive. In my experience, I’ve actually found that the more successful the designer (also, owners of successful design firms), the less competitive they seem to be, the more complimentary they are of others work, and they genuinely seem to be only too happy to see everyone be successful. If you have an opportunity to talk to them they’ll gladly give you solid advice.

So to summarize:

1) Dish up a heaping portion of humility.

2) Expand your knowledge of what is possible by following other designer’s work.
Here’s a few helpful links to get you started:

• The Behance Network (behance.net)
• Dribbble (dribbble.com)

If you’re a logo designer like me:

• LogoPond (logopond.com)
• LogoLounge (this requires a subscription of $100/yr) (logolounge.com)
• And a personal favourite logo designer of mine: Graham Smith (imjustcreative.com)

3) Expand your skill base by doing tutorials. Here’s a few links:

• Tuts+ (tutsplus.com)
• Lynda (lynda.com - These are more general for the most part, like if you wanted to know all the features of an application)
• YouTube. That’s right, YouTube actually has a lot of tutorials.

Any graphic designer who has had to send a proof to a client has received feedback and/or revision requests that nearly put them into an epileptic seizure. Sometimes it’s warranted, sometimes though it’s just a bad reaction to the feeling of rejection. How do you deal with it?

"I disagree!"

Maybe you go on a tirade to other designers, friends, your Twitter followers… Pretty much everyone except, thankfully, your client. I would warn, if you must rant, just make sure you keep it out of social media. You never know who can see it, and it really is in your best interest as a professional to internalize your frustration as much as you can.

Don’t Feel Under Attack

Be willing to accept that being angry about revision requests is usually a waste of time. Your client isn’t out to ruin you or your design, and contrary to popular graphic designer myth, most clients don’t have some huge ego where they must put their own stamp on everything to feel good about themselves. Your client has a goal in mind and screwing with you isn’t it. At best, there has been a miscommunication about the goals of the project and at worst, they’re usually earnest people who don’t have the same eye for design that you do.

Breeeeaaaath...

Now Take a Deep Breath

Calm down and read the revisions again and then consider for a minute how you would react to it if a mentor or someone you highly respected in the design field sent it to you. Does a design solution lay within the parameters of their requests? After all, the client is the one who should be most familiar with the goals, maybe they didn’t explain them to you well enough or they left something out, or you didn’t ask the right questions. If you were mistaken in what the goals are, then it’s nobody’s fault but you do need to re-design to fit the goals if you now better understand the goals. If you haven’t missed the goals OR if you’re now unclear of what the goals are…

Ask Your Client to Define the Goals Better

Back up your design by explaining why you’ve designed things in a particular way. If necessary, tell them why their revisions would upset that balance. Point back to your design brief and show them how what you’ve done is inline with the goals. If there was no design brief, then just explain what you believe the goals to be, then show how this design is inline with those goals, and put the ball in their court by asking them for a little guidance in the form of “…would you say I am on track with this line of thinking or do I need to alter my approach?” If they can’t explain the goals or say that you are correct in your assumptions, then they’re probably just giving their own aesthetic preference, in which case you may have to…

That's right! 4!

Educate Your Client

Another way you can back up your design is by explaining a few of the basic design principles that you’ve put in place such as alignment, balance, contrast, proximity, and repetition, or how what you’ve done is good practice such as, limiting the number of fonts and colours, your decisions in the typography, or even just explaining that certain things are faux pas such as using Comic Sans or making ones logo obnoxiously big.

Do your Due Diligence

If you can’t articulate the purpose of your design and you find yourself befuddled trying to explain why your design is so great, then consider for the moment that perhaps you have designed without forethought and have instead run away something that is aesthetically appealing and meaningful to you. It doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily wrong as I’ve found that overtime, I often wind up doing good design work without writing down all my goals and consciously adhering to any methods but when I’m challenged on it, I can often look back and see where I may have overlooked something or let my own bias take over. In any case, arguing “because it looks good” by itself is not acceptable.

"I will not design crap"

Never Concede Against Your Principles

We’ve all been at a point where we want to say “Screw it! I’ll give them what they want and be done with this project!” Never design something that you know sucks just because you think your client will like it. Don’t do it. If your client gets frustrated with you because you are not delivering what they want, explain that you will not design something that you would not put in your portfolio. It will hurt your reputation and your business to produce substandard work. Know that this is not a copout. Much like the “hippocratic oath” where a doctor swears to do no harm, designers should never send a client away with design work that’s going to blow up in their face down the road because it’s what they wanted. Sometimes you’re going to have to protect a client from themselves and the best way I can think of doing this is to never hand over a proof that sucks.

Leave a comment if you’ve had an experience with making revisions that you’d like to share.

State of the Union

I’ve been doing freelance graphic design part-time for years now and recently, thanks in part to a grant from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC), I’ve been able to freelance for Ulrich Design full-time. As a freelancer you’re continually on the job search. In this respect, the first quarter of 2012 has been very good to me. But finding new clients, I’ve found, is the single biggest hurdle right now. Satisfying them, happily, is the easy (and fun) part.

New clients come from some of the most unexpected places:

• A marketer in Toronto who found a blogpost I wrote
• The boss of a parent of a kid on the hockey team I coach
• People referred from “competitors” (I’ve actually found much of “the competition” to be quite friendly)
• Seemingly random requests for quotes from all over, including Canada, United States, Europe, and Australia.

Don't shut up, people!

The Best Advertising Money Can’t Buy

By far though, the single biggest resource with which I find new work is word-of-mouth. Any new business will tell you this. This is why I’ve decided to start up my the Ulrich Design Newsletter–Now! So that people can keep on top of what I’m up to and see my design work, as well as place some “top-of-mind awareness” out there for when the someone needs, or hear of someone who needs, a graphic designer.

What do you do again?

Ulrich Design provides Creative Identity + Branding Solutions™ (just kidding about the ™). If you’re not in the marketing or design field, I’ll better explain this marketer speak by saying, “I design logos and put them on things” (might want to trademark that one ). This is often the simplest way of putting what I do. I specialize in logo design and the subsequent branding (business cards, stationary, social media sites, clothing, promotional giveaways such as mugs, pens, etc.). I also often take on and enjoy print design jobs such as posters, brochures, and booklets.

You can view my portfolio at ulrichdesign.ca/portfolio.

I have a series of blog posts planned which I will be using as educational reference tools to my clients and prospective clients. If you’re looking at getting into graphic design, specifically logo design, you might find them helpful too. If they help new clients find me, well, that’s just an added bonus. In the past I have managed to make some contacts and get work from past blog posts such as, Why LogoWorks Sucks, so I know that finding new work because of blogging not beyond the realm of possibility.

So stay tuned, and if you have any questions that you’d like answered by a full-time freelancing graphic designer or if you have any suggestions for blog articles, you email me (info@ulrichdesign.ca) or comment below.

I always end up doing it sooner or later. I might go 12 projects in a row but eventually I have that one project where I procrastinate and just don’t “feel” like getting around to doing it. And there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it, it’s not any particular type of projects. I can never put my finger on why I dread it but when I finally sit down for five to ten minutes, open the files or read the email description, I realize that the task isn’t actually has hard, confusing, or time consuming as I thought, and I sit down and start doing it.

Our First Schnide

For the first time this season, we’ve strung together back-to-back losses as well as three winless games (0-2-1 in last 3). While it’s not time to hit the panic button, as we locked up 1st place about a month ago, it’s definitely worth while to look at where we’re going wrong. After coming off of lopsided back-to-back wins against the 2nd and 3rd ranked teams in Midget A, it looked like we would carry that momentum into the rest of the season. Unfortunately, in our next game against the Maroons we managed to battle out a 3-3 tie. While in Florida, I learned that we had lost 6-5 to South End, and then in my first game back witnessed a 6-3 loss to Nipigon (which, to be fair, was nearly a one-goal loss as they had popped in an empty netter to make it 5-3, and then punched in one more in the dying seconds of the game). Three close games shouldn’t aren’t the end of the world but surely letting in 14 goals in 3 games, up from about 2.00 GAA, is a far cry from how we’ve been playing. Part of it probably has to do with not matching up with other team’s playoff intensity. But it’s our first two straight losses. They sky isn’t falling yet.

If we can bounce back from this and play strong in our final game against the Canadiens, I think it will prove to be a good test for us before the playoffs. Our next scheduled game after that isn’t until the 19th. That’s a long wait but we do have a lot of practices scheduled in between now and then.

It seems fitting that the Canadiens would be our final opponent of the season. They were the first team we played this year and the last team we played last year. The Canadiens have struggled this season but have finally pulled together and are playing to their potential winning 5 in a row. We, on the other hand, have been playing our worst hockey of the season so breaking out of this slump would do a great deal to get us back on track and in a good mindset for the playoffs.

By the way, I’ll thank Canadiens Head Coach, Chris Cutting, for making me aware of the fact that I haven’t blogged those last 3 games. Thanks again, Chris!

First Period Goal

So smug...

Canadiens goaltender, Erik Tillberg had his ‘A’ game going against us all game. He’s got a couple buddies on this team, Kevin Janik and Zach Shaw (who he actually caught a ride with to the game), and he doesn’t seem to keen on letting them score as they were denied many scoring chances. We did manage to get the 1-0 lead though when Gordie Gaudette poked a loose puck in that was laying in the crease.

Second Period Goal

Our own goaltender, Jared Foulds, had also brought his ‘A’ game and had shutout the Canadiens for the most part but they got rewarded when Canadiens forward, Luke Dejong grabbed a rebound in the crease and stuffed it home to tie the game.

Third Period Goal

Penalties would be the difference as the Canadiens put themselves on a 5-on-3 midway through the third. Tillberg stopped a lot of great scoring opportunities en route to them killing of the first penalty but with seconds remaining on the second penalty, they got a Crosschecking penalty to extend our powerplay time. A minute into that powerplay, Jordan Gaudette would slide a puck across the slot to “Captain Clutch” Gage Bechard who’d one-time it into the net.

I see your smug and raise you!

Canadiens would pull their goalie with over two minutes remaining. And oddly enough, it would be Cole Colosimo, who hasn’t gotten a penalty in the whole regular season, who’d get a tripping penalty in the dying minutes of the final regular season game. It was actually a good penalty to take though as he took down Canadiens Captain, and most dangerous scorer, Brock Kasstan on his way to a breakaway. Our guys held up strong and killed off the 6-on-4 penalty. 2-1 final.

Great game by both goaltenders.

So now we, along with the West End Bruins, play the waiting game as we both get first round byes as the first and second placed teams. The third ranked Beavers will take on the sixth place Maroons, and the fourth ranked South End Junior Stars face the fifth ranked Canadiens. I really don’t know how to predict either of these series’. Just as long as they beat the heck out of each other!

Final Regular Season Record: 24-3-1 (49 Pts)

It’s been a great year, and winning the Regular Season is a big accomplishment… But that’s not why we’re here.

This week we have a couple games against the two clubs battling it out for second place to earn the coveted playoff bye into the semi-finals, the West End Bruins and Thunder Bay Beavers,

Game 23 vs. West End Bruins

Including tournaments, this would be our 6th meeting with the West End Bruins. West End has steadily improved on the year and is now competing for 2nd place with the Beavers in Midget A. In fact, before the game we got to watch South End beat the Beavers which leaves West End a single point behind them. The Bruins have gone on a run of 5-0-5 in their last 10 and actually their last couple losses were in back-to-back dustups with us, so our goal was to bookend their undefeated streak with another couple losses (the first game was the semi-finals in the Elks tournament, and then tonight). Besides, we were also bringing a pretty decent record of 12-0-0 in our last 12 regular season games into this one.

Ice Tilts One Way

Captain Z would notch the only goal for two periods

In the first period, we carried the play beautifully and generated a lot of scoring chances but we couldn’t bury our chances past Bruins goaltender, Alistair Shawinimash. Our captain, John Zurkan, though would carry the puck through the neutral zone, freeze a defender with a fake shot and deke around him, then go in and send a clapper past the goalie for the only goal of the period.

Ice Tilts the Other

We were happy with our play in the first period and felt we should be up a few more goals than just one. The second period, however, was a different story as West End tilted the ice in their favour and Jared “Red” Foulds had to be solid to keep our lead for us.

It Comes Unravelled

Gage: Sickest Hands in Midget A

About five minutes into the third though, Grant Hughes would work the puck to Eric “Donny” Donaldson who’s shot would bounce over to Gage Bechard who’d awkwardly knock in the loose puck to a yawning cage. A little over a minute after that, Kevin “Polish Flow” Janik would place a shot top corner to put us up 3-0. As the period wound down, Kevin and Gage would both get their second goals of the game. First Janik would undress a defenseman and fire a shot on net which the goaltender got a piece of but the puck would flip end over end and float into the net behind him. Not to be out done, Gage “Half Man-Half Amazing” Bechard gathered up a puck while on the penalty kill, undressed one defenseman, undressed a second defenseman, cruised in on the breakaway and lit the lamp (we don’t actually have goal lights) on a deke that only Gage could have pulled off. The bench exploded more than one should for a 5-0 goal.

And even though this game will go down as a 5-0 win, the score truly does not do it justice as it was a 1-0 game for a long time and if not for Jared Foulds’ shutout, could have turned out a lot differently.

Game 24 vs. Thunder Bay Beavers

Next we were on to play Jesse “Blue Pants” Milani’s favourite team to play against, his former club; The Thunder Bay Beavers.

Open the Floodgates

Gordie potted 2 goals in the first

We got off to a good start in the first period as Gordie Gaudette scored on the second shift of the game. Shortly after, Gage Bechard scored a goal on a move reminiscent of his goal against West End the previous game to put us up 2-0. The Beavers would get back in as David Kowalczyk would punch in a puck that was bouncing around feet in the crease. Shortly after that though, Eric “Donny” Donaldson would pot a goal on a nice passing play. In fact, all three of those goals were on passing plays in the slot that the goalie didn’t have much of a chance on. This trend continued as Kevin Janik would score on a one-timer and then Gage Bechard would again catch a pass on the rush and make a nice move to score. 28 seconds after that, David “Money” Evans would bank a shot wide of the net which would pop out on the other side for Gordie Gaudette who’d whack it into the wide open net. 6-1 after the first.

Early in the second period we’d earn a powerplay early. After holding in a puck at the blue line, Cole Colosimo froze his defender by faking the shot then sliding it over to Lucas Bava who fired a shot, that may have deflected off a Beaver in front, for the goal. The Beavers came back with a powerplay goal of their own with Morgan McKay setting up Tyler Maticic. We didn’t manage another goal in the period and on our powerplay, Beavers forward Eric “Army” Armiento fought for a loose puck between two defenseman and sprung himself on a breakaway for a really nice goal. 7-3 after two.

All-Star Donny

Donny "The Playmaker" snips at will

We found ourselves on a long four minute penalty kill and as it was winding down, Eric “Donny” Donaldson poked a puck past a defender at our blue line and raced for the net. Pressured by the defenseman, Eric wound up and slapped the puck top cheese for his second of the game. Then at about the ten-minute mark, Grant Hughes fed a nice cross-ice pass to John Zurkan which put him on the breakaway. John seemed to have forever to look over his options before snapping it top corner. And before the game could end, Gage Bechard fed a puck to Eric “I’m a Playmaker” Donaldson at the side of the net who’d score for the hattrick. 10-3 final.

Current Record: 23-1-0 (46 Points)

The last time we had played the Westfort Rangers, they actually gave us quite a scare as we took a 3-3 tie with them into the third. We ended up winning 5-3 but they played extremely well. The Rangers continued their play going on a run of 2-2-2 in their next 6 games, nipping at the heels of the Fort William Canadiens who currently hold down the final playoff spot.

Getter Done Early

Grant showing off his hand-eye coordination

We started off the game very well as John Zurkan scored just over two-and-a-half minutes in on a play from Gage Bechard. Closing in on the half-way point of the first, we’d work the puck down low in the offensive zone. The Rangers would manage to get a hold of the puck and try to wristshot it down the ice but defenseman Grant Hughes’ lacrosse skills would come into play as knocked the puck out of the air at about waist level with his stick to keep the play alive before Zach Shaw would pass far side to Kevin Janik who’d wrist the puck top corner for the 2-0 lead. Then just over a minute later, Grant would send a low pointshot towards the net which Eric “Donny” Donaldson would deflect in. 3-0 in the first half of the first period. Good start.

Rangers Wake Up

Through the next two periods, the Rangers would play the game that got them back into the playoff hunt. They started getting more offensive chances and at the 7:00 mark, former Elks Bantam B star, Andrew Ktytor would notch a powerplay goal to make it 3-1. Suddenly, we had a game. Jared Foulds, however, was in Wayzata form stopping everything that came his way and didn’t allow another goal for the rest of the game.

Making Goalies Look Good

For our part, I thought we had ample scoring chances to score that fourth goal to really put the game out of reach but we just seemed to lack focus and didn’t capitalize when we got scoring chances pelting their goalie in the chest over and over. It was kind of frustrating when at some points it was just a matter of picking a side of the net but instead the puck was put dead centre. Because in the end, the game in determined by goals for versus goals against. And while it’s usually hard work that gets you there, you also have to capitalize on your scoring chances when you get them and we’ve all seen plenty of teams get out worked in every facet of the game but still win. And I don’t want to leave anything to chance. Yes, we’ve won 15 straight games so who am I to complain (I’m a coach, that’s who!) but we’ve made too many goalies look very good lately.

On the other side of the puck, Jared’s one goal against this game now brings our team’s regular season goals against average under 2 to 1.95 GAA and to accomplish that you need a team dedicated to defense.

Current Record: 21-1-0 (42 Points)

(But that’s no reason to get complacent)

About 16 hours after returning to Thunder Bay, we had a regular season game against the South End Jr. Stars. As I had mentioned in my last blog post, we lost a young man named Mathew Gibbons well before his time, so before the game we observed a moment of silence. Eric Donaldson, who was quite close to Mathew, honoured him by wearing #3 (a spare jersey we had) for this game.

Zurkan would score two goals on the night

South End would get things started just under three minutes in on the powerplay. A bobbled puck in the crease would lead to battle near our goal line which South End captain, and former Elks 82, Justin McGinnis would punch in the goal. Less than two minutes later, we’d even it up on a goal by our own captain, John Zurkan, who’d score off the rush and before the period ended Gordie Gaudette would work the puck to Gage Bechard who’d bury a goal to put us up 2-1.

Next, Gordie Gaudette would work the puck from behind the net out front to David “Money” Evans. #11 would score at the 11:00 mark of the second but just over a minute later, South End defenseman John Soychak would  score to cut the lead back down to one goal. We exchanged a powerplay per side in the second with no powerplay goals.

Evans score two as well including the game winner

David Evans would extend our lead to 4-2 early in the third period with his second of the game and then, after South End got a 4-minute Head Checking penalty, we’d really open up the lead with 3 goals in just 55 seconds. First Eric Donaldson would sneak in a bankshot off the goalie’s pad from behind the net, John Zurkan would score his second goal on the second powerplay, then Konrad Mutschel would dish the puck to a streaking Zach Shaw who’d lift the puck bar-down on the backhand at close to the 10-minute mark to make it 7-2. Before the period was out, we’d have to kill off a couple penalties to skate to our 20th win of the season.

Current Record: 20-1-0 (40 Points)

Thursday morning, we made the bus trip down to the Minneapolis/St.Paul area for the ‘Wayzata Junior Gold B Tournament’ to compete with a total of eight teams; Five teams from Minnesota, including the Osseo-Maple Grove team that we played in the Grantsburg tournament, one from Fargo, North Dakota, and our old rivals, the Des Moines Buccaneers who we’ve met in tournaments the past three years.

The bus trip down, as usual, was a blast. I’m assuming the kids, who were sitting at the back, were well behaved but I wouldn’t have been able to hear them over the parents if they weren’t. This was the case as well at Romano’s Macaroni Grille (which is always a great place to eat) as the children were seen but not heard. The parents, on the other hand, were easy to pick out.

When we booked the arrangements for this tournament, we had anticipated playing an early afternoon game on Friday but our first game wasn’t until 9:30pm, so we called ahead and booked an hour of ice time at the rink to run a light practice, nothing big, just to get their legs moving and get some passing to decrease the chances of them being flat at game time, and we also ran through some shootout scenarios in preparation should a game go to the shootout.

Game One vs. Burnsville Blaze

We opened the game with the momentum. Had a couple shifts in their end and about half-way into the period we earned our first powerplay. Burnsville countered though when a blocked point shot led to a breakaway for Blaze forward Alex Christoffersen who went in and scored on a nice shot. After that we ran into some penalty trouble but managed to escape the first period only one goal down.

In the second, Burnsville took a 2-0 lead. One of our d-men blew a tire which led to a two man breakaway. Sam Dimmen slid the puck over to Christoffersen who one-timed his second goal of the game into the net. And then a mere 16 seconds later, Burnsville would take a 3-0 lead, this time it was Christoffersen assisting on a goal by Dimmen. We called a time-out to try to calm down and re-focus the boys.

Mount the Comeback

Jordy was going to do whatever it took

Half-way through the second period, we’d get another chance on the powerplay. We moved the puck around well and eventually Evan Saunders would find Brett Pattison in the slot and he wired a one-timer under the crossbar to bring us back within two goals.

In the third period we came out and absolutely poured it on and earned another powerplay. Grant Hughes would fire a puck on net from the point and David “Money” Evans would punch in the rebound. After David’s goal, we got back to pouring on the pressure but Burnsville goaltender, Matt Omodt, stood tall. Eventually though, with about four minutes remaining, John Zurkan would slap a loose puck towards the net and Jordan Gaudette knocked home the rebound to tie the game. Needless to say, we were pretty pumped. Before we could get out of the third, we got a minor penalty with around two minutes remaining. Our penalty killing, as always, was great, and Jared “Red” Foulds kept us in it. This game would head to a 4-on-4 overtime.

Overtime Magic

Dog-pile on Cole!

Overtime looked like the third period as, again, we pressured Burnsville but goaltender, Omodt, was not letting anything he could see past him. It looked to be maybe going to a shootout when Cole Colosimo sent a point shot towards the net. One of the Burnsville defensemen reached out to grab the puck but it went off his glove and up over the goalie’s shoulder and under the bar. Sudden victory! It was a huge comeback. I didn’t doubt that we could do it but I did feel like one more goal by Burnsville might be the nail in the coffin.

Game Two vs. Osseo-Maple Grove Saints

We met Osseo-Maple Grove (OMG) in Grantsburg in a tight game where we came from behind four times to win. It was a tight game and one in which we got a lot of breaks. From playing OMG the last time we were prepared for their style of hockey. They’re fast and they love to use the stretch pass. They transition very well and they’re good at scoring off the rush. They caught us off guard in Grantsburg but this time we were more prepared as the first period we pretty much took turns trying to grind out a goal in their end and then stuffing their rushes.

Goal Rush

Bava gets things rolling

In the second, Lucas “Steady As She Goes” Bava broke the tie with his first goal of the year on a beauty shot that went bar down. Good timing by Lucas! We got a big break moments later as OMG looked like they had tied it up but the goal was waved off as a player was in the crease. On our bench we were a bit confused (and relieved) since they don’t call it like that up in Canada. But with under five minutes remaining, OMG got the play they were looking for as we got caught pinching and they quickly transitioned to a 2-on-1. OMG forward Zach Corbin held on to the puck and made a nice deke move to score and tie it up. We made a couple big plays though in late in the period, first, while on a delayed penalty call, we managed some strong 6-on-5 play before Gordon Gaudette found Gage Bechard all alone in front of the net. Gage hammered the one-timer for the goal, scoring with 1:51 remaining, then gave a mad celee. The next shift Zach Shaw and John Zurkan did a lot of great work at their blue line to keep the puck in their zone and managed to find Kevin Janik all alone in front with all kinds of time. Janik looked over his shooting options for what seemed like 10 seconds before shooting. From our angle on the bench we couldn’t see where the puck went in and, unlike Gage, there was no double fist pump with a leg in the air – In fact, Kevy looked like he was slumping his shoulders, but then Zach came over and hugged him so everyone on the bench put two and two together and started celebrating too. The goal came with 54 seconds remaining. 3-1 lead going into third.

Uh… What’s going on?

In the third, we mostly defended our lead, while generating a few scoring chances. Still, we would have felt better with just one more goal. We had one pretty funny moment where Evan Saunders and OMG forward Tanner Sinjem were battling for a puck in the corner. One of our players swooped in, picked up the puck, and headed down ice. Meanwhile, Evan hadn’t seen the play and kept pressuring the forward on the boards figuring that the puck must be in their feet somewhere, and the forward, still getting pressured by Saunders, must have figured that the puck was somewhere there too so he kept battling. Eventually, the ref blew the whistle and gave them both minor penalties.

Back-Breaker

We needed every goal and every break against OMG

At just over the half-way point of the period, a puck got chipped out of our end to centre and Brett Pattison got into a foot race for the puck. He looked like he was going to lose it when he dove out and poked the puck ahead to Eric Donaldson who went in on a breakaway and scored to make it 4-1.

Too Little Too Late

We had a 3-goal lead and seven remaining minutes to kill in what seemed like the longest third period ever. We managed to kill off one penalty but in the last minute of play, OMG forward Tyler Coyne flew in and snapped a laser under the bar with 54 seconds remaining. The score was still 4-2 but a lot can happen in that amount of time. OMG pulled their goalie and kept pressing. Time was winding down when a puck squirted loose out to the back door to a forward who knocked the puck into our net with 5 seconds left. It appears that Eric’s goal was dearly needed as we clung onto the 4-3 win.

Mathew Gibbons #3

He was a beauty defenseman

The morning of the Championship game we learned that Mathew Gibbons had passed away back home in Thunder Bay after his vehicle was struck by a transport. Mathew had some friends on this team and they, as well as all the players, parents, and coaching staff are thinking of him and his family with heavy hearts. I can only speak on Mathew as an opposing coach. Matthew Gibbons, number ’3′, was in his final year of Midget and had played defense the past two seasons with the Fort William Canadiens. He was a defenseman who, as an opposing coach, you wanted to keep your best scoring line away from. He was such a smooth operator as he was smart defensively and very good at removing players from the puck and then gaining the puck.

He was taken from us too soon. I urge everyone to do whatever they can to support the Gibbons family.

Championship Game vs. Des Moines Buccaneers

Chasing Des Moines

For the past three years, we’ve come down to the US to play in tournaments and in those three years we’ve met Des Moines and lost to them all three times. This will be the fourth year that we’ve tangled with our States-side nemesis and we were hoping for a better outcome.

The first period started off tight as we exchanged chances. Both goalies played well and the first period ended in a 0-0 draw. In the second period Jordan “The Monster” Gaudette had a monstrous shift where he took the puck end-to-end, circled behind the net and then came out in front and fed the puck backdoor to Gage who one-timed the puck in. 1-0 good guys. We found ourselves short-handed with Des Moines starting to buzz in our end and passed it back to the point for a shot, Kevin “Polish Flow” Janik blocked the shot and went in on a breakaway. He had a lot of back pressure but managed to protect the puck, pull it to the backhand for the roof-jobbed. 2-0. From there we started really tilting the ice but couldn’t manage to get the third one.

Keeping the Puck 200 Feet Away from Our Net

Yeeeaaaahhhh!!!

After the intermission, we felt like if we could just keep the play in their end that everything would work out and that’s pretty much what we did. We hemmed Des Moines in their end for the vast majority of the period and nary gave up a scoring chance. They eventually pulled their goalie and had a good chance but we recovered and kept the puck out of the dangerous areas until we finally worked a puck up to Gordie Gaudette who potted the empty netter for the final dagger. We watched the clock run down and then everyone jumped over the boards and tackled Jared “Red” Foulds who had stopped everything that came his way for the well deserved shutout.

2012 Wayzata Tournament Champions!

We were extremely pleased to win this tournament in particular because I figured this would be the hardest one to win, and it was. We were pushed to the extreme in our first game but the boys wouldn’t be denied. We had a game plan against OMG and the boys stuck to it. And then they had a very dominant performance against Des Moines. We couldn’t be prouder.