{"id":143884,"date":"2023-12-07T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/?p=143884"},"modified":"2023-12-06T22:16:09","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T04:16:09","slug":"this-week-in-ecac-hockey-slow-start-to-2023-24-season-now-in-past-union-gaining-confidence-starting-to-hit-our-stride-as-a-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2023\/12\/07\/this-week-in-ecac-hockey-slow-start-to-2023-24-season-now-in-past-union-gaining-confidence-starting-to-hit-our-stride-as-a-team\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in ECAC Hockey: Slow start to 2023-24 season now in past, Union gaining confidence, ‘starting to hit our stride as a team’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Union captain Ben Tupker battles for position during a recent game against Princeton (photo: Shelley Szwast\/Princeton Athletics).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first month of the season wasn’t necessarily the best of times for the Union hockey program.<\/p>\n

The Garnet Chargers had a new logo, a new name and a new identity, but they also had four losses in their first six games. They\u2019d been wildly inconsistent in their results, and they bookended flashy scoring in their two wins with a number of high-goal scores in their losses. The nadir came on Nov. 3 when their longtime rival at Rensselaer tallied eight goals in a wild 8-6 win.<\/p>\n

For coach Josh Hauge, the results didn\u2019t match his team\u2019s capability. He\u2019d seen his team invest the requisite time and energy to play hockey at a high level, and his first full offseason at the Achilles Center built an opportunity for Union to layer more success on top of last year\u2019s eighth-place finish. Having interacted with his team on a daily basis, he knew there was more to it than those early losses showed.<\/p>\n

He just needed some wins to support the argument, and after that 8-6 loss to the Engineers, Union started to draw a clear line of delineation. A 2-6-0 hockey team promptly won four of its next five games before swamping Princeton with a 7-2 win, and prior to Wednesday night\u2019s game against Maine (a 3-1 loss), the team that christened a new day with its new branding is poised to enter the second half of the season as a sleeper team capable of upending the current ECAC order.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur guys started to figure out what they needed to do to be successful,\u201d Hauge said of last month\u2019s success. \u201cAnd they started following their leadership group. Our leaders have done an amazing job, and when you look at Ben Tupker, Tyler Watkins and Chaz Smedsrud and the job they\u2019ve done in leading this group, it\u2019s pretty impressive. I think they\u2019re just starting to gain confidence, and we\u2019re just starting to hit our stride as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ironic that Union would have been considered an inconsistent team in those early games because of the statistical consistency that emerged in November, but the team that was nearly identical on shots to St. Lawrence in a one-goal game generated more chances against Stonehill and Princeton in three other, more lopsided wins. It fell in line with a season-long trend where a team that\u2019s a game over .500 both averages and surrenders around 3.5 goals per game with 30.5 shots on either end.<\/p>\n

The Garnet Chargers were simply better when they successfully tilted game situations in their favor, but if that\u2019s an obvious statement to make, it\u2019s also one that\u2019s backed up a hard-working roster attempting to play a two-way game. Flipping the switch to winning games didn\u2019t require one specific moment or performance, but it did utilize a culture that was built on continuing to press forward by managing its emotions through both highs and lows.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve seen [the culture] shift to where hockey becomes really important to our guys here,\u201d Hauge said. \u201cWe\u2019re on trimesters at Union, so our year goes a little bit longer, but the guys didn\u2019t miss a lift and didn\u2019t miss a skate, and we still practiced a couple of days per week [during the offseason]. When we were able to get on the ice with the guys, it wasn\u2019t the same as a regular practice because it became more about small games and competing and skills development, but that showed how hard they worked in the spring and how that translated into the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

That shift hasn\u2019t translated to a significant move up the ECAC standings yet, but the nine-point output is tied for seventh place with St. Lawrence and Brown while standing one point behind Dartmouth and two points behind Princeton with games in hand. The three-point deficit to Colgate and Cornell includes two games to make up against both teams, but the second half of the season also has the Garnet Chargers avoiding consecutive weekends on the road.<\/p>\n

Defenseman John Prokop leads the league with 14 assists and is the only non-Quinnipiac player with at least 15 points on the season. Chaz Smedsrud\u2019s six goals are tied for ninth in the league while Carter Korpi sits one spot behind him with five goals, but both are rated in the league\u2019s top-15 with about a half-goal produced per game.<\/p>\n

Chauvette is one of three goalies with at least 300 saves this season, and the team in front of him is both third in the league for assists per game and second in points per game as a combined roster. The offense is scoring at a 12 percent clip on its shots, which is second to Quinnipiac, and both the power play and the penalty kill are among the league\u2019s best with a penalty kill rated as one of the nation\u2019s overall top units at 92.9 percent – or one-tenth lower than Quinnipiac\u2019s 93 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been trying to win with depth,\u201d Hauge said. \u201cThat\u2019s an area where we have a lot of guys that can contribute and chip in. We want to play with pace, so we want everyone on our roster to have the confidence that they can make a play, but if we\u2019re not going to get the puck bounces or something, they\u2019re also not going to lose their mind. We know that everyone is going to backcheck as hard for us if they make a mistake, and that\u2019s the attitude that we\u2019re competing hard, that every player brings value to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first month of the season wasn’t necessarily the best of times for the Union hockey program. The Garnet Chargers had a new logo, a new name and a new identity, but they also had four losses in their first six games. They\u2019d been wildly inconsistent in their results, and they bookended flashy scoring in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":143885,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[804],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis Week in ECAC Hockey: Slow start to 2023-24 season now in past, Union gaining confidence, 'starting to hit our stride as a team' - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The first month of the season wasn't necessarily the best of times for the Union hockey program. 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