Colorado College hockey faced some tough losses this last weekend against No. 4, Boston College. The Tigers played two games against BC, the first of which was on Friday, Oct. 23. The game started off very evenly matched.
Freshman goalie Jacob Nehama held BC off the entire first period. BC finally snuck past Nehama with less than five minutes left in the second period and maintained this one point lead throughout most of the third period. In the last six minutes of the third period, BC scored two more goals ending the game with a 3-0 victory over CC.
Nehama made a total of 31 saves. The Tigers had 24 shots on goal but were unable to break through BC’s goalie Thatcher Demko. Neither team had a successful night for power plays; BC failed to capitalize on any of their three opportunities and neither did the Tigers for their four.
Saturday’s game unfortunately did not go any better for the Tigers. Nehama was not able to repeat his previous first period performance and the Tigers faced a deficit early on. BC scored three times in the first period.
“We felt that coming in on Friday [Nehama] was the guy to go with,” said Head Coach Mike Haviland. “We thought he played really well on Friday. I mean it was 1-0 with five minutes left against the No. 4 team in the country. We felt that the goals that went in on Friday night weren’t because of the way he played so that’s why we went back to him on Saturday.”
Junior goalie Tyler Marble went in for the last two periods. Marble held strong for most of the second period, but BC managed to score again with less than four minutes remaining.
BC’s strong defense prevented the Tigers from trying to minimize their deficit.
The Tigers had around 35 seconds early in the third period where two power plays overlapped, giving the team a precious half minute of 5-on-3 play. But even with the advantage, the Tigers were unable to break through Demko.
“[Demko] is a good goalie with a hard working team in front of him, a team that can make plays,” said Marble. “Demko not giving up any goals on the weekend shows how focused he was against us and how their whole team was committed to defending in their own end.”
BC made the final goal of the game at the 8:53 minute mark of the third period during a power play. The Tiger fans suffered a huge disappointment as they watched their Tigers score their first point of the game, only for the goal to be taken away.
“BC thought it was off-sides,” said Haviland. “When they reviewed it, they found out it was off-sides so the play had to go back to where that whistle would have been and that goal would have been after the whistle, so that’s why it got taken off.”
The game ended with a 5-0 BC victory and another BC shutout of the Tigers.
“We as a team never want to lose back to back games on the weekend, especially at home,” said Marble. “We prepare for each game, and as a team we need to work on playing a full 60 minute game. Fatigue was not a factor. We are used to playing in elevation and on our Olympic sized arena.”
Marble made a total of 27 saves on Saturday. BC outshot CC both nights, holding an advantage of 34-24 shots on Friday and 37-21 on Saturday. After the weekend, BC’s record for the season improved to 4-1, while the Tigers continued their rough losing streak with a record of 0-6.
This weekend, the Tigers kick off their conference action with two games against fellow National Collegiate Hockey Conference member North Dakota.
“The message is that the real season starts now,” said Haviland. “You know, we’re trying to keep everything as positive as we can. But the spirits aren’t good; nobody wants to lose. The record isn’t indicative of the way we played. I didn’t like the way we played against BC on Saturday night but the week before that I thought we played pretty well up to that point. You’ve got to be positive. You’ve got to keep teaching what our identity is as a team, and that’s a hard-working team that’s got to not give up as many goals because we don’t score a lot of goals.”
The Tigers will battle North Dakota at the Broadmoor World Arena on Oct. 30 and 31.