Photo Credit- Charlotte Rush

The Rush are one of very few organizations that have both their premier and elite teams at Nationals in Utica. Both teams can do great things, and both teams have gotten their Nationals campaign opened up with different results. The Premier Group won their opener in the seeding round against the Minnesota Moose white the Elite side came up short against the Northern Cyclones. Both teams can improve their fates with games in the coming days. Here’s Head Coach Troy Schwab on day one of Nationals.

“Premier

I felt we had a really good week back in Charlotte before we left for Uitca and I felt we had a really high energy practice last night. We prepared for the Moose leading up to game 1 and had a really good understanding of what challenges the Moose would throw at us. 

Special Teams are very important in critical games. Our powerplay has been good of late and that continued again today. Bryce got us on the board and allowed us to settle in. As you saw with the way we scored today, if you continue to go to the net, you will get rewarded. We want to generate as many shots as we can. We had close to 60 shots today and when you put that many pucks on net, you eventually get rewarded. You saw that as well late today. We get putting pucks on net, sticking to our game plan, and we generate more chances and capitalized on those chances late. 

Nick Anderson once again played very well for us. Stood tall and made the saves he was supposed to make, and a few he isnt supposed to make. 

We have another huge task ahead of us tomorrow in the Ogden Mustangs. A team that got off to a slow start and is needing a win to keep their season alive. 

We will need to play a more complete game to be able to beat Ogden. We will need to be better at managing pucks. The hope is to get off to a good start and continue to get shots on net and generate scoring chances. We do that, we have a chance to be successful again. 

Elite 

I don’t think we were close to good enough today to be successful. We didn’t generate the opportunities we needed to generate because we didn’t play hard enough or fast enough. The Cyclones were patient and forced us to make mistakes. They are a very skilled team and when we make mistakes they look to capitalize on those mistakes and they did just that today. 

Our elite team needs to play a full 60 minute game. We can’t just be good in spurts and hope to be successful and we can’t rely on 1 or 2 guys to carry the load. 

The good news is we can still control our own destiny. We need to play well against a team we know very well. We start playing hard and managing pucks, we are in a good spot. 

The elite team has a habit of being a team that can ride momentum. We need to get momentum early in tomorrow’s game and carry that through the 4 days.”

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