Jones helping team move past adversity

Seth Jones is a defenseman for the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League. The 6-foot-4, 205-pound defenseman has solid athletic bloodlines -- his father, Popeye Jones, played 11 seasons in the NBA. Jones excelled the last two seasons for the U.S. National Team Development Program and likely will play for the U.S. at the 2013 World Junior Championship. Jones has offered to maintain a monthly blog for NHL.com that will chronicle his season leading up to the 2013 NHL Draft.

It has been an exciting past couple of months for me and the team. We have been extremely successful as a team and the chemistry with each other is really coming alive. We hope to keep the flow going through the rest of the year.

The first part of November saw us run our win streak to 12 games. We have had some close one-goal games and some blowout games as well. Either way, the team gets ready for each game the same. Everybody is calm and relaxed while we play soccer. We are cracking jokes and not thinking about the game too much. You can feel the energy rise the closer you get to game time. We ended up losing to Kamloops, one of our conference rivals, at home on Nov. 16, which snapped our streak.

We let the loss sink in that night, but that did not stop us from winning games. We haven't lost since then -- we've won six straight. December will be a big month for us to end the first half of the season on a high note.

I feel like I finished the month well, also. I had a point in our last four games in November, and I just continue to feel real comfortable in every situation on the ice.

We are now dealing with some adversity as a team. As you probably heard, our coach, Mike Johnston, recently was suspended for the rest of the season. It was devastating news for us knowing that we lost one of the best coaches in the CHL for the remainder of the year. We now have to stick together as a family and keep winning games. The most important thing for us to do now is keep believing in ourselves. Our goal this year has not changed at all, which is to win a Memorial Cup.

Follow Seth Jones on Twitter: @seth_jones04