We lost Willcox (experienced D) on about his first shift against Harvard, then Fiegl (rookie forward) had a bad upper body injury against Dartmouth, and Ryan (senior D and best player on the team) was roughed up too. P. McCarron (soph D and a solid blueline offensive player) was shut down for both games and might still be out. In addition, it was finalized that Lowry (senior forward, best offensive player on the team) has sustained a college career-ending injury. Those are the ones I know about; there may be more. It's bad; we're running out of bodies to put out there, and a couple guys who do skate are given very short TOI, so Mike has a short bench for essentially the whole game. Not surprisingly, this also plays hell with lines and chemistry.
But... we didn't lose to Dartmouth because of injuries; we lost because they played a great game and during the portion of the game that we were all over them, their G (Grant) was a wall. It happens. From what I gather, 'Gate plays a similar style to Dartmouth, with speed to burn and enough toughness to get by. I have a feeling we're going to line up poorly against them, and I'm usually fairly optimistic.
The saving grace is for whatever reason these games tend to be very close. In the past 'Gate was able to steal points against better Cornell teams; this year I am really hoping we return the favor.
