{"id":90013,"date":"2019-01-02T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/?p=90013"},"modified":"2020-08-24T13:33:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T18:33:16","slug":"morelli-sitting-atop-nchc-scoring-race-but-omaha-captain-wants-to-just-focus-on-the-task-at-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2019\/01\/02\/morelli-sitting-atop-nchc-scoring-race-but-omaha-captain-wants-to-just-focus-on-the-task-at-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Morelli sitting atop NCHC scoring race, but Omaha captain wants to ‘just focus on the task at hand’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Omaha<\/a>
Mason Morelli (11) has recorded 12 goals among his 21 points for Omaha this season (photo: Michelle Bishop).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More and more, Mason Morelli is making up for lost time.<\/p>\n

Omaha\u2019s senior captain played just 16 games last season before suffering a knee injury during the team\u2019s holiday break. Now wearing a letter for the first time in his Maverick career, the Minot, N.D., native whose father and grandfather both played for North Dakota seeks to end his stay at his own school with a bang.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks (6-10-2) are stronger now than they were in their 0-6-1 start, which set a new low in the program\u2019s 22-year history. Morelli has played a key role in the turnaround, as he boasts a career-best 12 goals to go with nine assists. His two goals in a 4-0 home win Monday against Alaska Anchorage made him the NCHC\u2019s new top scorer with 21 points from 18 games.<\/span><\/p>\n

He bagged three goals in Omaha\u2019s second weekend sweep of the season and was unlucky not to score more. He grabbed an empty-netter in the Mavericks\u2019 3-0 win Saturday, but he put a shot off the crossbar earlier in the third period and would have had an assist off a 2-on-1 if an open shot hadn\u2019t sailed over the net.<\/p>\n

Nine of Morelli\u2019s goals this season came after Omaha\u2019s bad start, the gravity of which couldn\u2019t have been easy to ignore.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou try not to look at that,\u201d Morelli said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of statistics you can bury yourself in, but at the end of the day, you just try to wipe them under the rug and kind of just focus on the task at hand and what\u2019s going on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morelli recently returned from a 12-day trip home. Since then, he has resumed the level of work second-year coach Mike Gabinet has come to expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother guy where he earns what he gets,\u201d Gabinet said after Saturday\u2019s win over UAA. \u201cIf you need guys to shoot on goalie practice, he\u2019s always on the ice. If you need a guy to tip pucks, he\u2019s always on the ice. You need a guy to work hard in the weight room, and he\u2019s always in the weight room, and if I\u2019m a young guy and I want to be a good hockey player, you should see how much time and effort he puts into becoming a good hockey player.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always joke about, on one shootout goal (against Colorado College on Nov. 30, a game in which Morelli scored in regulation), he said, \u2018I\u2019m not really a skill guy,\u2019 and yet he\u2019s probably near the top in the NCHC conference, and he gets that because of the way he plays the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morelli has room for improvement, especially defensively as he holds a minus-nine rating on the season.<\/p>\n

If he shores that up, he will have continued to set a good example against Omaha\u2019s remaining schedule made entirely of currently-ranked opponents.<\/p>\n

UAA (2-15-1) isn\u2019t as formidable as what lies ahead for Omaha, but the Mavericks proved in that series that their determination didn\u2019t drop over the holiday break.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of young guys playing big minutes, but as those guys get more comfortable and get settled into their roles a bit and we get on the same page and play the hockey we want to play,\u201d Morelli said. \u201cEveryone went home for Christmas break and had a little recharge of the batteries, so I\u2019m excited.<\/p>\n

“I think we\u2019re all going to be ready to go and win some more games in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More and more, Mason Morelli is making up for lost time with Omaha (photo: Michelle Bishop).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":110540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[810],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMorelli sitting atop NCHC scoring race, but Omaha captain wants to 'just focus on the task at hand' - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"More and more, Mason Morelli is making up for lost time with Omaha (photo: Michelle Bishop).\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90013\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Morelli sitting atop NCHC scoring race, but Omaha captain wants to 'just focus on the task at hand' - 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