We traveled to Moorhead for a two-game series against Concordia last weekend and came away with a series split. We lost on Friday night, 2-1, and won on Saturday afternoon, 4-2. Both games were very close and SJU alum Chris Howe ’99 has done a great job putting his team together up at Concordia. Their top line lived up to the expectation and ended up scoring three of their four goals on the weekend. I will say that I thought we did a pretty good job shutting them down 5-on-5 with the line only scoring one even-strength goal on the weekend.
We had a big game on Saturday from seniors Matt Colford (2 goals) and Evan Okeley (1 goal and 2 assists). We also got two big games by junior goaltender Andrew Lindgren, who only gave up four goals on the weekend with 50 saves. We are going to need our upperclassmen to continue to step up moving forward for this team to have the success we want.
Here are a few of my takes on the weekend:
1. We need to play a more physical and gritty style of hockey to win more games moving forward. I felt that we didn’t finish enough checks or win enough battles in either game to come away happy in that aspect.
2. We need to find a way to score more goals. We are not going to win a lot of weekends when we only scoring five goals. We are currently one goal-per-game average less than we were last season. If we are going to score more goals we need to get to the front of the net with more passion and we need to be willing to get to the tough areas.
3. Our special teams need to be better. We had many opportunities for our power play to step up and make an impact in the games and we failed to produce in key situations. In fact, I feel that we didn’t even produce the opportunities in those situations to build the team’s confidence in the game.
4. One thing that I really liked on the weekend was that we only gave up four goals. Defensively we are playing well and we are definitely getting good goaltending. This is something that we can take pride in and build on moving forward.
As I am writing this blog we are getting ready for a team video session to cover all these aspects. We have the weekend off, so we have a little extra time to get some things implemented before we hit the huge six game stretch starting next weekend with a two-game series against nationally ranked Augsburg.
We have the guys to accomplish some special goals, but we must find another level of play to accomplish those goals.
Thanks for all your support and GO JOHNNIES!
