It's a terrific year in the league. There are a lot of good teams, and you've got one of them right here.

This year, there's no question that across the league, most teams have been active and that's rare. Under the old system, the cap wasn't bumping up like this. You've never seen a quantum leap like this in the cap.

Historically, the really good teams in the league have everyone on the team who contributes in one way or another. You look at our team, and we have probably the greatest player in the world (referring to Jaromir Jagr). But we also have a lot of really good role players. The guys who score points are going to get a lot more of the accolades. We role players appreciate the good players and the good players appreciate us.

We played immensely better. Oklahoma City is one of the top three or four teams in the league. We didn't play 100 percent better. We played 500 percent better.

Corning has a good team year-in and year-out. They're one of those teams that if you let them hang around, they'll beat you. That's what we did. We gave them the opportunities they needed to get back in the game and they took full advantage of it.

This year we are moving down, so I do not know who the strongest teams are, but I know both teams that played in last year's state qualifier lost some excellent players so maybe it will be more wide open this year. Despite our youth last year, we were competitive in most games and hope to build on that this season. Last year's experience should help us.