Two league wins ... take them and move on. As Coach Ellsworth told me before yesterday's game the days of nightly blowout wins are over.
Two points to remember after this weekend.
1) There is some serious depth here this year ... talented kids working their butts off in practice looking for ice time. Rickett at J&W and Googins at UMB both elected to move on and landed big roles with their new clubs.
2) The NEHC just keeps getting better. Right now I would venture to say any one six teams could win it, and any of the other four could beat anyone any day.
Absolutely correct Puck Voice, we saw this this weekend. Both J&W and UMB nearly beat or tied us and while that would not have been unheard of from UMB, no-one would have bet on J&W to come away with a win or a tie. On paper and past history, we looked to beat J&W by a large number of goals, just goes to show you, paper does not show up to play the game. J&W should win some close games this year and I would put them near or above a .500 by the end of February. Based on watching both NU games from afar, I actually thought that J&W played better than UMB played. It's hard to tell so early in the year what this conference is going to do, but I agree with Coach Ellsworth, there will be a lot of 1 goal games and OT's/Ties like last year. Some of that will be attributed to a "hot goalie" on any given day and we may very well call this season the "year of the goalie". A great deal of pressure will be on these guys considering the fact that they rarely take part in scoring but are totally responsible whether a game is a win, loss or tie.
This coming weekend's games will be similar to the situation of this past weekend. Castleton has had some difficulties getting in the win column and NU should beat them on Friday night. However, anyone who knows about the rivalry between these Vermont Schools, will tell you Castleton can catch you snoozing and nothing is better that CST beating NU, especially in the opponents home opener, on "Darn Tough Sock Toss" night, in a packed Kreitzberg Arena (hopefully for the Sock toss). Besides, it's Castleton's first conference game, what a great way to start the season with a win over the Cadets. Do I think all of this will happen...frankly no, but the Cadets need to be as pumped up about the game as the Spartans are. No sleeping on the job (ice) guys!
Saturday's game against Skidmore may be the first real test for the Cadets. Skidmore always demands respect because they find every little hole in your defense and always press hard. This is the first game of the season that I have anxiety over, beaten only by NU playing at Skidmore. Certainly, Hobart, Elmira and Babson are also deserving of my worry, it just that with Skidmore, you never know what team you are going to get. Will it be the team that has you scratching and crawling to get a goal, or the team that makes a lot of mistakes. In the past 13 games, we have won 1 game by 4-0, lost one game by 4-0 and tied one game 4-4. In those 13 games we've had 4 games that ended in a tie, lost 3 games (1 in OT) and won 6. Out of the 6 games we won, two of them were by 1 goal (one game we won in OT), three of them by 2 goals, one game by 4 goals. With an OT loss and win, we tied Skidmore in 6 out of 13 games! That's about 50% of the games were tied. That's how close these two teams are in past 7 years. One thing is for sure, we need more offense and I think the new players will make the difference. We need to run and gun this Saturday for sure.