Looking For Luck In All The Wrong Places

Looking For Luck In All The Wrong Places – December 18, 2025 – Sullivan Arena.

– Goffstown Grizzlies Hockey –

 

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. Philippians 2:3-4

 

 

First, I give thanks. We are so abundantly blessed to have the opportunity to host, present, and play hockey games at such a wonderful venue as Thomas F. Sullivan Arena on the campus of St. Anselm College.

After a loss on the road (sort of) at JFK against Manchester, the Grizzlies returned to home ice to host the defending NHIAA Hockey D-II State Champions. As you can quickly surmise, the schedule can be friendly or quite unfriendly depending where your team is on the growth, development, and maturity timeline.

The Goffstown Grizzlies Hockey team lost their home opener, 3-0 to the St. Thomas Saints. It is the first time in the history of the Goffstown hockey program that the team has started with back-to-back shutout losses. After all, we do try to track all things.

Even so, there are literally pluses and minuses in every game, practice, or team gathering. The goal of course is to generate more pluses than minuses. In truth, the only way to really get more pluses is to suffer minuses. If done correctly, the minuses are tremendous teachers. They teach players, coaches, and teams what needs to be done to improve. To learn. To grow.

All of this is important of course. But, so too is the learning to appreciate the struggle and remember it when minuses past turn into pluses present and future. Part of growth should include a grace and humility to remember where you came from and all that you struggled through to get positive desired results.

Then the real icing on the cake, is doing all of this with others. Actually, doing all of this, FOR OTHERS. The rewards are far greater when they include others, as in serving others and lifting them up. This is almost always a staple among the greatest teams you have ever seen.

Imagine you are planning an event, or a moment, to celebrate your Mom or your Dad, or even your very best friend. For those people you hold most dear you would give everything you had and knew to give to make such a scenario stand out, above and beyond the norm, the routine, or the lazy. You would rest at nothing to make such a thing beautiful and memorable, not for your own glory, but for the celebration of the ones you love.

Team sports is no different. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be.

Honestly, don’t go looking for luck in all the wrong places, look at yourself, look at your own skill set. Then look immediately, up and down your bench. Look around the locker room. Walk the team bus, row by row, and look at who you are going to battle with. You are not battling against them, you are battling alongside them. This isn’t just a ‘game day’ thing, this is an ‘every day’ thing. How can you get better? More importantly, how can you get better at making everyone around you successful?

Don’t chase the hit. Hits come naturally in the flow of the game. When you make a run out to center ice to legally crunch some opponent and the bench pounds the boards with their sticks while the student section goes crazy, make sure you have stopped the puck. Because what has been happening is this; the puck continues forward into the opponents offensive end. And now a player is stuck somewhere half a rink away from defending with his or her team.

It might have been a nice hit but it disrupted exactly nothing. Like sticking your oar into the lake as you paddle frantically to get back home. You turn and look only to see that all those strokes not only did not disrupt the fluidity of the water or leave a path to retrace, but you are no nearer to home. In this scenario, home might be the defensive zone where you and your teammates must take care of business first, and foremost.

The moment that the members of a team look away from ‘the we’, to the ‘I’m thinking of me’, the ‘whole’ starts to lose value and become less than the sum of ‘the parts’.

The deke at the blue line to get yourself free for a shot, puts your line-mate offside. Perhaps a give-and-go, or dump and chase would have led to a better result while involving teammates.

 

The time consuming toe-drag becomes a poke check, blocked shot, late pass, or fumbled turnover. Move the puck with intention, with urgency, involving the strength in numbers, your teammates.

The lazy, thoughtless, run-of-the-mill clearing attempt poses no threat to the defenseman at the point. He says thank you as he rifles a shot into the top of the net. Bang! Possession of the puck turns into a turnover and a goal in under four seconds. Value the possession as if it were the last time you had a chance to execute a game-winning touchdown drive, every time you have the puck. You never know when the game will be won.

Solid hockey plays, or as I say dozens of times per game, “Just make a good hockey play”, usually involve more than one player. Sometimes it’s actually the giving up of self that is necessary. Like hitting the red line, dumping the puck deep, and getting off the ice for a line change. Seriously.

This is simple stuff, but it does not feed ego. Which is the point.

1. Getting to the red line avoids icing and a D-zone face-off.
2. Getting the puck deep forces the opponent to attempt puck retrieval roughly 200 feet away from the goal they are shooting at.
3. It also makes your opponent work to gain possession and then turn up ice.
4. You get off the ice to recover and share reconnaissance with your team.
5. Fresh legs get on the ice and pursue vigorously because they are rested and dialed in to support the team and the decision to make a ‘good hockey play’.
6. Keep in mind that the ‘dump’ is more often a good play than trying to force an individual play that never leads to a shot or possession.
7. Also, the more ‘good hockey plays’ that are made will usually result in more opportunities for team and individual creativity to flow naturally as part of the game.

 

The team is learning on the fly, and I trust they will make the best of their growth. Players play. Coaches coach. Every teammate is important. Dressed for games or not, you still have the last card to play. Will the card you play be one of a good attitude, attentive learning, and encouragement of the group you have worked so hard to be a part of? All of it matters. All of you Goffstown Grizzlies Hockey players matter. Sometimes a ‘good hockey play’ is the one you make on the bench or in the room.

 

Game three tonight. The Goffstown Grizzlies Hockey team plays, on the road, at Somersworth-Coe-Brown, Rochester Arena, 6:30pm.

 

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Goffstown Grizzlies vs. St. Thomas Saints.

Sullivan Arena, St. Anselm College, Goffstown, NH.

NHIAA Hockey: Game two.

Thursday, December 18, 2025.

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NHIAA Hockey:

Scoring:
Goffstown Grizzlies: 00 – 00 – 00 = 00

St. Thomas Saints: 00 – 03 – 00 = 03

Shots on goal:
Goffstown Grizzlies: 06 – 14 – 07 = 27

St. Thomas Saints: 07 – 15 – 04 = 26

 

Goffstown Grizzlies Penalties:

• Wilkinson – 2:00 – Tripping.
• Bernard – 2:00 – Head Contact.

Goffstown was 0-for-3 on the power play, while the St. Thomas Saints were 1-for-2.

• Goffstown Grizzlies – Kyle Bennett (Jr.) made 23 saves on 26 shots (.885).
• St. Thomas Saints – Gavin Brayne (Sr.) made 26 saves on 26 shots (1.000).

Here we go.

1. 1. 2nd 3:47 – St. Thomas Saints – Even Strength – Thomas Edgerly unassisted. Turnover on clearing attempt. Shot from the blue line finds the net. 1-0.
   2. 2nd 5:06 – St. Thomas Saints – PPG – AJ Kozlowski with a sweet back door goal set up by Aiden Tibbetts and Cam Aceto. 2-0.
   3. 2nd 10:09 – St. Thomas Saints – Even Strength – Breakaway – Cole Genest unassisted. Took the Christmas gift from the Grizzlies. Back in the D-zone and skated in all alone to bury the shot and finish the 3-goal scoring spree over the previous 6:22 of game time. 3-0.

 

You can find news, video, updates, and all kinds of interesting tidbits involving Goffstown Grizzlies hockey here, Goffstown Grizzlies Hockey.

 

 

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The thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributors, mostly mine. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the leagues, schools, coaches, players, or characters listed in any of these blog posts. Or, maybe they do. Either way, you would have to ask them directly.