#12 PC Hockey Takes on UNH in Home and Away Series - Robert McMahon
Robert McMahon, Sports Columnist
#12 PC Hockey Takes on UNH in Home and Away Series - Robert McMahon
First a quick look at the Vermont games.
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PC takes 5 of 6 possible points from Vermont
In this week’s media conference at PC, Coach Nate Leaman, commenting on the Vermont series, sighed and said, “We are still very much a work in progress. It looks like it’s going to take us a while to get where we need to be.” The two overtime games at Vermont bear Leaman out. PC needed a goal by grad student Nick Poisson at 1:29 of OT to capture the Friday night game. You can put an asterisk next to that win, as it marked the 400th win in Leaman’s college coaching career.
It looked like Vermont was going to split the series. With 8 minutes left in the Saturday game, PC was down 4-2. PC pulled backup goalie Borgiel with about 2 minutes left on the clock, and PC was down 4-3. With 25 seconds to play and the extra attacker, PC’s Nick Poisson scored his second goal of the weekend to tie the game and send it into overtime. PC won the shootout 1-0 to take 2 points for the shootout win instead of just 1 point for the tie.
Friars Have to be Wary of the Wildcats
Before looking at the details of this matchup, let’s take a quick look at the way Hockey East looks after two weekends of play. Granted it’s a tad early to jump to conclusions, but here’s my preliminary take on the shape of Hockey East.
There appear to be four tiers of teams. Tier One: Boston College and Boston University are head and shoulders above the rest of the league in terms of talent. Tier Two: Providence College and Maine, at the present time, look like they should be battling it out for the #3 and #4 rankings, with the Maine Bears looking better right now than the Friars. Tier Three: this is where there is a dogfight for slots #5 through #9. UMass Lowell, New Hampshire, UMass, Northeastern, and UConn—it’s hard to rank these guys yet. They’re pretty equal, but also pretty dangerous for the teams just above them. With a hot goaltender on a particular night, any of these teams could be trouble for PC and Maine. Tier Four: Merrimack and Vermont look like they will be fighting to stay out of the cellar (despite Vermont’s relatively strong showing against PC).
So, it is a worrisome series against UNH. PC has to play a lot better than they did against Vermont if they want to sweep the Wildcats. PC enters this weekend’s series with a 3-1-1 record, while UNH is 2-1-1. In a shocker last weekend, UNH stunned Quinnipiac, an ECAC powerhouse team, winning 3-2, in the second game of the weekend. UNH, like PC, has trouble scoring. The Wildcats have only scored 7 goals in four games. They depend on their goalie Jared Whale, who has a 1.84 goals-against average, to stay afloat.
UNH also enjoys an edge anytime they play on their home ice in Durham at the Whittemore Center Arena. The ice sheet there is one of the largest in college hockey at 200’ by 100’ compared to the conventional size of 200’ by 85’. With 14 of the 28 players on the PC roster new to the PC program, 13 likely have never played on a rink that big. PC grad student Cam Gendron played 4 years for UNH and knows Whittemore well. While he has not gotten much playing time yet for PC, Gendron is likely to punch his ticket for more minutes in the Saturday game at Whittemore.
Additional Slap Shots
- PC is 20-20-4 all-time against New Hampshire, but 6-2-2 in their last ten meetings.
- Freshman Trevor Connelly, expected to lift the Friar offense, has not played since the second period of the first game against Arizona State. He suffered a knee injury in that game. "He's feeling good, he's pushing us, I can tell you that. We want to make sure it gets to 100 percent, so when we get him back, we can keep him back," Leaman said this week. He will not play against UNH but may be back in the lineup the following weekend.
- PC has scored only one power play goal in their first five games. They are 1 for 10. Leaman is still trying to figure out his best combination of players for the team’s power play.
- PC is averaging 3.0 goals/game so far. That needs to increase to 3.3 or 3.5 if PC is to be an upper tier Hockey East team.
- Last week, for the second weekend in a row, Leaman used backup goalie Zach Borgiel in the second game of the weekend series. Borgiel gave up 4 goals to a low scoring Vermont team. It will be interesting to see if Leaman uses his first team netminder Phil Svedeback in both games this weekend against the Wildcats.