The Colorado College men’s hockey team played two radically different games this weekend, beating Nebraska-Omaha 5-1 on Friday night and losing 6-1 the following Saturday night. Scoring the only goal on Saturday night, senior forward Hunter Fejes expressed his frustration with the team’s effort on the night of their loss.
“The way we performed on Saturday was unacceptable,” said Fejes. “Our team has been making significant strides in the right direction…however, Saturday night’s game was a step backwards. I think the most important theme we are trying to tackle as a team is consistency. Obviously, consistency has been our biggest challenge as a team. We have such a young team this year, so our upperclassmen are trying to set the example. If we do that then the underclassmen will start to follow our lead.”
Nebraska-Omaha came out strong on Saturday after their loss on Friday. They scored twice in the first period and then four more times in the second period. Fejes’ goal came with just 1:08 left in the second period. It was his 12th goal of the season, a team high. The Tigers toughened their defense in the third period, debuting junior goalie Derek Shatzer. The third period was scoreless for both teams.
Sophomore defenseman Duggie Lagrone believes the team’s split results are still a push in the right direction.
“It was great to get a win like that and put ourselves in a position to win the weekend, but we learned a lot about how we need to better mentally prepare for the next night,” said Lagrone. “Ultimately it’s going to help us moving forward for the rest of the season.”
Five different Tigers scored the five goals on Friday. The score remained 0-0 in the first period but both teams got on the board in the second. Freshman forward Mason Bergh and junior forward Luc Gerdes each scored power play goals in the first half of the second period. Nebraska-Omaha cut the Tigers’ lead in half with just a little over a minute left in the period. It would end up being their only goal of the game as freshman goalie Jacob Nehama made 36 saves for CC.
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In the third period, three more Tigers scored. At the 9:04 mark, freshman forward Trevor Gooch made a goal off a rebound. His goal was followed a few minutes later by junior forward Christain Heil, who made his second goal of the year. Junior forward Sam Rothstein finished off the scoring with an empty-net goal. Nebraska-Omaha had pulled out their goalie in order to have a 6×4 advantage, but even that couldn’t give them the edge over the Tigers.
The Tigers’ record for the season is now at 6-19-1 with 4-11-1 in conference. The team is not discouraged, noting the difficulty of their conference and the extreme significance of their win on Friday.
“Our team is embracing the role of being the underdog every weekend,” said Fejes. “We have been improving a lot throughout this whole season. If you look at our last 13 games, we are 6-6-1 since the beginning of December. I should also mention that our last 10 games have been against nationally ranked teams…Our record this year does not represent the way we are playing right now.”
“Our team has a lot of confidence heading into the last eight games of the regular season. If we get hot anything can happen. Our main focus is to keep moving up our conference. We have to keep finding ways to get points on the weekend so we can keep moving up in the standings. Our conference standings are so tight right now and with one good weekend we could be sitting at fifth place in our conference.”
Feeling confident and ready, the team also agrees that Saturday night’s loss is something to put in the past and quickly move beyond as they work toward what they hope will be a successful playoff series.
“As a team, we need to erase what happened last weekend against Omaha. We cannot dwell on the past,” said Fejes. “Instead, we are working very hard on and off the ice. We are competing against one another. As a result, the intensity in practice has been high all week, which will translate into the games.”
“It’s important to not let emotions get too high after a win, and we can’t get too low after a loss,” said Lagrone. “So we come back the next night ready to play or we get back to work on Monday and prepare for a new weekend.”
The Tigers prepare to take on Minnesota Duluth this Friday and Saturday. Though pressure may be high, it seems that for these players, morale is even higher.