Hey Habs, my ten year-old Squirt player watched the game last night and has the following tips for you to improve your play. He says they have worked for him since he was 8, and maybe they'll help you.

Mr. Theodore -- if you have two defensemen fighting for a puck behind the net, maybe you should let them get it and stay in your crease. It's hard to stop a goal when the net is in between you and the shooter.

Mr. Theodore -- if you're going to go down on every shot, you might want to make sure that yu at least go all the way down so that pucks don't sneak under your stick and pads.

Captain Koivu -- the basic idea with passing is that you pass it to someone else on YOUR team, rather than the opposition. You can tell which is which by the color of the uniform.

Mr. Bouillon -- when your defense partner is in the corner and nobody is covering in front of the net, should you: a) rush into the corner with him and leave the front of the net completely uncovered? or b) cover in front of the net just in case the puck happens to wind up there? (Note -- if you choose a) again like you did last night, you will probably be booed!)

Mr. Komisarek -- we learned in science class that solid objects can't usually penetrate other solid objects, so if you're going to shoot from the point, you have to make sure you get the shot off before there's a defender two feet in front of you.

Mr. Zednik -- I saw you on the ice last night. Had you been out injured the last couple months?

Mr. Ribeiro -- you sure made a nice pass on that Begin goal. All the passing practice you've had in games this year is really paying off. I always thought you should try scoring some goals, too. But to do that, you have to shoot sometimes rather than always passing or dumping it. Just a thought...

All Defensemen -- you know as well as everyone that your goalie stinks and so it makes sense that you would be going down to block shots and passes all over the zone. But you gotta pick your spots. When you're down, you're out.

All Forwards -- when you try to slow a player down by tugging on him with the blade of your stick, it's called hooking and they will call a penalty on you for it. You should know this, but in case you didn't, it was called a few times last night -- and always on you Hab forwards. A couple things to learn from this: a) if you hustled and moved your feet, you wouldn't have to hook the other player, and b) if you see two of your teammates get called for hooking in the space of five minutes, maybe you should take a hint and not go hook someone yourself!

Entire Team -- the power play is the perfect opportunity to display your offensive skills. A good team will score on about 1 out of every 3 power plays. They do this by cycling around the offensive zone, creating openings, passing more quickly than the opposition can react to the passes, taking lots of shots and getting them on the net, beating the other team to the puck, digging it out of corners, etc. etc. Let's see, you had 5 power plays last night and how many goals...? Oh, guess you're not one of those good teams.

Coach Gainey -- or maybe I should call you General Manager Gainey, since you don't seem to be having a lot of luck as a coach. When we play lousy against one of the Massachusetts teams and get beat by more than 2 goals (the ways the Habs got beaten last night, only not as bad as that), our coach yells at us. He also yells at us when we're on the ice, when we're on the bench, when we're on the bus -- and anywhere else that he thinks a little yelling will help us pay attention to what we need to do to play better and win. (He also yells at referees, but that's another story) I know that most of the Habs players are a lot older than we are, and that having grown-ups yell at each other is different than a grown-up coach yelling at a bunch of little kids, but maybe you should try it sometime. My coach yelled at us last game and we came back and won. Might be worth a shot.

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