Eric Hartzell has become the No. 1 goaltender at Quinnipiac (photo: Shelley M. Szwast).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n“Nebraska was very good; no question they’re a top-10 team,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said. “We’re fortunate to come out of it with two wins.”<\/p>\n
The youth movement in Hamden makes the victories all the more surprising, as Pecknold hasn’t minced words when it comes to his team’s reliability from game to game, or minute to minute.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had good streaks this year where we’ve played well, then we’ve kinda lost our focus and lost our compete level and struggled, and then we’ve refocused again,” he said. “So I think it’s a little early to judge who we are yet.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t had anybody that’s been great every game.”<\/p>\n
The one facet of the game that has looked sharp for Pecknold and the Bobcats has been their goaltending. Sophomore Eric Hartzell has wrested the starter’s spot from junior Dan Clarke, and has done his darnedest to hold onto the status.<\/p>\n
“I think the way he’s playing now, he’s won the job,” Pecknold said of Hartzell. “Clarky’s looked very good since we’ve come back from Christmas break; he looks like he’s refocused his game … so I think at some point we’ll get him back in there, but Hartzell’s certainly hot right now. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that you play the hot goalie.”<\/p>\n
Goaltending has been — and will be — critical to the Bobcats’ success this season. The skaters have been hot and cold, so it’s come down to the netminder to keep QU competitive while his support finds itself.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to make adjustments in games,” the coach explained. “In the first game against UNO, we played very poorly. Hartzell kept us in the game, then we got a couple good bounces and got the lead, and some confidence. The biggest thing for us is, when we’re struggling a little bit we need our goaltender to make some saves for us and let us hang in there until we can regroup.”<\/p>\n
Colgate<\/h4>\n The trials and travails of the Colgate Raiders are well-documented, so let’s cut to the chase. The team is 3-14-1, 0-5-1 in league play. The Raiders lost seven in a row, which overlapped an eight-game winless streak in November. They’re currently slipping down a five-game losing slide, and they have the nation’s ninth-worst defense.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, we’re struggling to find ways to win games. It’s been a real challenge, there’s no other way to put it,” coach Don Vaughan said. “We’ve come very close — if you look at our scores, if you count empty-net goals, I think 10 of our 14 losses have been by one goal. So we’re close, but that doesn’t get you much.<\/p>\n
Vaughan explained that mental lapses are to blame more than lack of skill, work ethic or even that most holy of all coaches’ components to success: confidence.<\/p>\n
“Mistakes have been killing us. It seems like every time we make a mistake — and they’re not small mistakes, they’re bad turnovers, we’re not taking care of the puck in critical areas of the rink — and it seems like every time that happens to us, the puck ends up in the back of the net,” he lamented.<\/p>\n
“We tied Princeton early, and gave up a breakaway goal. We had Cornell down 3-1, and gave up a breakaway goal. We had Boston College the other night, 3-1, and gave up the puck right in front of our own net. Those are momentum changers … and the game is a lot about momentum. We had it, we give it away, and we can’t seem to get it back.”<\/p>\n
Fortunately for the beleaguered bench boss and his charges, conditions seemed to improve last weekend. The results may have been the same, but at least the production was there: Colgate’s eight goals (five against Boston College, three at Dartmouth) were the most that the Raiders mustered in back-to-back games all season.<\/p>\n
“The focus has to continue being on limiting our mistakes. If we do that, and the production continues to be where it is now, we’ll get some wins,” Vaughan said. “For us, right now, we have to focus on taking care of the puck, getting it in deep, not turning it over in the gray areas. We’ve done too much of that.”<\/p>\n
Those who follow me on Twitter<\/a> will have known that Minnesota Wild prospect Anthony Hamburg left Colgate to return to Omaha of the USHL after only one semester and seven games. That’s not going to be the end of his Colgate story, though, according to Vaughan.<\/p>\n“He just felt he wasn’t getting the kind of minutes that he needed for his immediate development. So the plan is for him … to return to Colgate at some point,” the coach stated.<\/p>\n
As for the players remaining, Vaughan isn’t worried about wavering commitment.<\/p>\n
“If there’s been any kind of silver lining, it’s that our guys continue to work,” the veteran coach pointed out. “Individually, we work very hard, but for whatever reason we haven’t been able to find a W.<\/p>\n
“Our focus is probably as good or better than it has been all year now. We’re looking at our season as the next 16 games; I think we’re as good as we can be in terms of our mind-set and preparation. Teams are going to continue to beat each other up, and if we can string together three or four weekends, we can put ourselves right back in the middle of this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we welcome in the new year, we also welcome the meat of the season: It’s pretty much ECAC Hockey from here on out (the Beanpot and a smattering of other non-conference games notwithstanding). We’re rounding the bend into the final straightaway (albeit an eight-week straightaway), with our teams starting to show their true selves. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":122740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Trending topics around ECAC Hockey at the start of the new year - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n