Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/50

 As a hockey axiom, it might be said that "it is better to think more and rush less, than to rush more and think less."

The cool, collected, calculating player is worth more to a team than two or three of the class whose main object seems to he the possession of the puck for a "big" rush down the ice.

If any man among your opponents is to be feared, let it be the one who thinks out each move, who makes no useless plays, who shoots for the goals only when there is an opening, because "such men are dangerous." Many a game is lost, many a chance is missed by the man who will not, cannot take time enough to think out a play.

Another requisite is confidence, both in your assistants and in yourself. Just as that regiment whose soldiers rely upon one another is a better one than another, in which the members have no confidence in their comrades, so, in a hockey team it is absolutely necessary that each player should be able to depend upon his confrères.

A team should feel that it can defeat any seven that opposes it, and each individual man of a team ought to believe that, if necessary, he can pass any one of his adversaries. A team that goes on the ice thinking that defeat is probable, is already beaten; a player who fears