Starting the season against 3 HEA teams and going 1-1-1, not bad at all. Especially considering the amount of time we spent short handed throughout those 3 games (48 mins!!). Makes me think Atlantic Hockey play is going to be a lot more fun for us (and less stressful).
With regards to the NEU games, I think the first game was absolutely a win for us. The scoreboard may have read 1-1, but the takeaways from that game were enormous. First of all, the JAR was PACKED and everybody was on their feet. For 3 straight years we've tried to get the entire crowd standing but have never been successful, until Friday night. The atmosphere was amazing. Myself and fellow Top Shelf members were continuously saying to each other, "can you believe this?! We did it!!" It sounds a little ridiculous, but it was really a pinch-yourself type of game where we couldn't believe what was happening.
In terms of our play, and just like Coach Soder said, we should be extremely proud of how our boys battled on Friday night. When we were even strength (which wasn't too often), we played them even, if not out-played them. I truly believe we should've won that game and thought that our play showed a lot of promise. Saturday night, however, was a little bit of a different story. Two very sloppy goals let in early (one of which was an own goal) put us in a hole we couldn't dig out of. But, those two goals are not the reason we lost the game. Not only did we play poorly, but the Huskies really played like a much better team and absolutely beat us.
Talking specifics, pretty much everything we did right at UNH we continued to do right on Friday night. The freshman continued to impress, French and Schmidt played well, and rising star Alexey Solovyev looked more and more like a team leader with his dominating play. Not to mention Argue standing on his head all night with 35 saves. We had our moments Saturday, including some impressive individual efforts from French and Solovyev, but overall our team play was pretty abysmal. Passing was very poor, defense was particularly sloppy, and Argue, whilst 4/6 of his GA were mainly due to other factors, did not look particularly sharp.
It was also nice to see freshman Ryder Gorowsky and sophomore Jake Ahlgren in the lineup this weekend, with Ryner picking up his first career assist and Ahlgren continuing his good play from last season. That line of Ahlgren-Callin-Gorowsky Saturday was one that I predicted in the offseason, and I expect to see more of it as the season goes on.
...hats off to the Falcons...they deserved the win. Good luck the rest of the way!
