It has been a little while since my last blog and I know I am due for a little update. At this point, we are sitting at 2-4-4 overall with 10 games played. This is not the record that we were hoping to have at this point, but we are making strides as a team and are working through some adversity that has set in with our team. With that said, I have complete confidence in this team to have the second half that it needs to accomplish our goals. We have only played 5 MIAC regular season games and we have 11 remaining. We still control our own fate.
The story in the first have has two plot lines. One is our inability to win the close games. So far, we have tied 4 games, and lost 4 games by 2 goals or less. We only lost one game this season by 2 goals if you take away empty net goals. On the other side of that, the two games we won were by a 5-0 score over Stout and an 8-2 score over Bethel. We need to find the confidence to win the close games that we are sure to be in during the second half of the season.
The second plot line is that we are creating a lot of great scoring chances and having a hard time getting the puck in the net, while giving a few very good opportunities against us and the other team capitalizing. We need to continue to push offensively, but at the same time we can’t give goals away. In the game of hockey goals are to valuable and we must be better at limiting opportunities against. To put it in perspective, the last 2 games of the first half we outshot our opponents 100 shots for and 50 shots against. We lost both games while outshooting our opponents 2-1. We created a lot of great chances, but we also gave up way too many odd man rushes and gave too many grade A chances and it came back to beat us in the end.
Looking forward to the second half of the year, we have 15 games remaining (4 non-conference and 11 MIAC games). We start the second half of the year with our trip to Boston from January 2-6. We play Hobart on January 4th at 2pm CT and again on January 5th either against Nichols or Bryn Athyn. This will be a great trip for the boys, and we are really looking forward to it. We follow that up with a trip to Superior, WI and Ashland, WI to play UW-Superior and Northland in two non-conference games. Those 4 games will finish our non-conference stretch and lead us into our final 11 games, all against MIAC opponents. It will be a challenging second half of the year and I hope to see you all in a rink supporting Johnnie Hockey.
Have a great holiday season with family and friends and see you all again in the New Year!
