Matt Avens on London United

[Mr Bohannan 114]

Matt Avens finally got the chance to have practice and some time on ice with his new teammates. It was important for him to see the skill level of the players he's gonna be playing together in order to understand what he can do to help the team. Although he heard some bad things about Londons past and as a fellow Londoner he knew about it as well, he was hopeful after seeing his new team on ice. You could say that London is going through a little rebuild and most of the players are fresh and green which is good for the future and maybe even not that distant future as everyone is eager to prove themselves. At first the team looked impressive as Matt got on the ice after everyone else and saw them shooting puck at the goalie. All the players definitely showed good scoring skills. Truth to be told might have looked like that also because of the young goalie that team has. When it came to attack drills, that's where Matt started to see some issues in his teammates. First of all the skating skills were not top notch for most of the guys. Some had issues with acceleration, some had issues with reaching good top speed, so there was definitely space to improve. Skating a side, the biggest disappointment for Matt was his teammates puck handling skills. They might be good shooters, but the puck handling was lacking a lot which basically neutralizes the point of being a good shot if you lose the puck before it's in the attacking zone. Defensive understanding was quite good, so that was a plus. Considering the age of most of the players in the team gives hope that they still can improve on these skills, but that also means that the chances to go against more skilled teams will be a challenge.