Ten games into this season, Colorado College’s average of four goals scored per game means the 7-3 Tigers have had the joint fourth-best scoring offense in the country.
Bagging goals at such a high clip, including CC’s 5-1 road win Friday at Miami and a 4-1 victory Saturday over the RedHawks, has been a happy byproduct for a team without a now-professional, then-junior forward who scored 21 of CC’s 84 goals last season.
“We had obviously lost a big chunk of our offense with Hunter (McKown) leaving, but I thought our depth and the growth of our returners and our freshmen make us a more deep offensive team, and more threatening that way,” Tigers coach Kris Mayotte said.
“Do I think that we’re going to score four goals a game all year? I don’t, and some of that is our schedule, but some of that is what we expected.”
Many of CC’s offensive leaders so far this season were already known quantities.
Stanley Cooley was a 20-point forward last season who is up to six in his junior season, and senior Logan Will’s two goals and seven points so far have him nearing his 12-point haul from last year, when he was battling injuries throughout the campaign.
Noah Laba had 11 goals and 22 points last year as a freshman, and while he’s on pace (six goals, 11 points) to improve on that, he isn’t the Tigers’ top scorer. After tearing an ACL 14 games into last season, sophomore forward Gleb Veremyev is now leading CC with six goals and 12 points.
“Gleb put in a ton of work with his body,” Mayotte said, “and you don’t like it to be due to a season-ending injury, but his height has always been there at 6-4 and he was always tough to play against, but he was a really skinny kid and (his recovery) has allowed him to focus a little more on his body, and watch and take a step back and see it from a 30,000-foot view.
“That has really helped him, how he manages the game, how he plays the game, how he attacks it. He sees what’s available, how fast things happen and how to win the space and keep it, but it’s all due to his work ethic and his desire to get back.”
CC opened this season on a five-game win streak before falling at home to a first-year Augustana program that, in taking advantage of the NCAA transfer portal, came into that Oct. 28 game with more prior college game experience than the Tigers had.
Then, two weeks ago, CC fell to heavy defeats in a home-and-home series with local rival Denver, the first ranked team the Tigers had faced this season. CC lost 6-1 on the road and 5-1 the following night at home in a game that Mayotte doesn’t believe was as one-sided as the score suggests.
“We had chances 8-4 for (Denver) in that second game, and we’re happy to only give up eight chances in a game, but we didn’t force nearly enough, and we had a lot of work to do, especially offensively,” Mayotte said. “I liked where we had gotten to without the puck, but we needed to do better with it.
“We were disappointed with those results, and it’s a big rivalry game but more than that, we wanted to see where we were. What we learned is that we have a gap to close in terms of wanting to be one of the best teams in the country, but that’s OK. We’ll put together a plan and start to attack it.”
And the Tigers will get to do that against a tough remaining schedule before the holiday break. CC hosts 16th-ranked Western Michigan this weekend, then has No. 14 Arizona State at home Dec. 1-2 before a trip the following week to No. 2 North Dakota.
“Our next six games will be big for us,” Mayotte said. “Those are big-time opponents for us, and those are games that we need to start winning if we want to be the program we talk about being. You’ve got to win big games and win them in the regular season.”
