Lucas Punkari
Muskie assistant coach Ken Christiansen has seen a lot since he made his first appearance behind the bench at an OFSAA hockey tournament way back in 1971.
But even he can’t recall the last time the black-and-gold went to the all-Ontarios and failed to bring back a win, which is exactly what happened last week in Toronto.
“It’s certainly been a long time, that’s for sure, but those things will happen,” Christiansen reasoned.
“Over the years, I’ve found that the big teams from southern Ontario have been getting a little bit better each year, and it’s getting harder and harder every year for the smaller towns like ours to compete,” he added.
The Muskies, ranked 13th going into the 20-team tournament, went 0-4 in round-robin play to finish last in Pool ‘A,’ with their closest contest coming in their tournament-opening 7-4 loss to Mount Carmel (Mississauga) last Tuesday morning.
Fort High’s offence then ran out of bullets—mustering just two goals in their remaining three games, which ended with the black-and-gold being blanked 4-0 by the 20th-seeded Holy Cross Crusaders (Kingston) on Thursday morning.
“We struggled scoring goals, there’s no doubt about it, but that’s something we struggled with all year long, even in our league,” Christiansen stressed.
“When you play those teams down there, they’re very good defensively and that really puts a lot of pressure on you to get goals,” he explained.
“Don’t get me wrong, we worked hard to try and score, but it ended up being quite difficult to do so when facing those defences.”
In addition to their scoring woes, Christiansen feels the competition the Muskies were up against this year’s all-Ontarios made it tough for them to advance further.
“It’s almost like competing against an ‘AAA’ team now, and down there they get to play teams like that quite often whereas we don’t have that luxury,” he noted.
“You need to have an older team with a lot of senior players in order to compete against them, and I think for the boys that’ll be back next year, they know now that they need to step their game up even more to compete with those top teams.”
Another aspect of the team’s play Christiansen feels will need to be addressed heading into the 2011/12 NorWOSSA campaign will be defence, which he found also was an issue in their OFSAA showing.
“You can skate hard and do everything well on that end, but if you can’t do the little things and you can’t play well defensively, you’re going to have problems,” he reasoned.
As it is every year, though, a number of Muskies took off their uniforms and skates for the last time Thursday after they fell to Holy Cross, with this year’s crop of graduating players among those Christiansen says he’ll certainly remember.
“The boys that are moving on this year we’re a great bunch of kids who worked hard and were a lot of fun to be around,” he remarked.
“What I like most about
coaching is getting to work with the kids and seeing them get better, not just in hockey but in life, as well.
“You need to work hard in anything you do to accomplish your goals, and although sometimes you’re not able to accomplish them, you can still learn a lot from that experience,” Christiansen said.
