With the men’s hockey team mired in a five-game winless streak, murmurs are once again surfacing. Speculation abounds as to the reason behind the team’s struggles. Some will inevitably take the pessimistic approach, blaming everyone from the administration down to the equipment manager and calling for wholesale changes, starting with Head Coach Dan Fridgen.
Those same people will posit that the team is ensnared in yet another late-season flameout—like last year, where an 8-8-2 record midway through the season devolved into a 14-22-2 mark once everything was over.
Others will take the optimistic approach, pulling for the team to make a run into the playoffs. After all, the team hovered around .500 two years ago but exploded with a 10-5 record down the stretch and came a goal away from making it to Albany. The coaching staff has proven it can make the adjustments to win key games and shut down the opposition’s top scoring threats. The players, too, have shown they can step up to fill the void created by injuries to the team’s leaders—especially the underclassmen.
The only thing certain about this team, really, is its uncertainty. Simply put, injuries to some of the team’s key contributors have prevented anyone—including the coaching staff and the players themselves—from knowing how good this team actually is. Based on that, a five-game winless streak—though it has taken place in the heart of conference play—is no cause for concern, and it’s definitely no reason to start panicking.
Kevin Croxton, a senior captain and scoring leader, was sidelined with an ankle injury. Brad Farynuk, Kevin Broad, and Tyler Eaves all went down with their injuries in the same weekend and have been out ever since. Alexander Valentin has been lost for the season ever since tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in the Ohio Hockey Classic just after Christmas. Then there is the loss of scoring dynamo Kirk MacDonald, who hasn’t suited up for a single game all season.
Without Croxton’s deft playmaking, Farynuk’s fiery leadership and hard-nosed defensive style, Broad’s catalytic aggression, Eaves’ tight-checking defense from the forward position, and Valentin’s skill with bringing the puck out of the defensive end and manning the point on the power play, it’s no surprise that this team has struggled lately. But no one associated with the team is using the injury problems as a justification.
“That’s the way the ball bounces,” said Fridgen last week.
As a result of the injuries, the Engineers have been dressing five defensemen for the last seven games. They all deny fatigue as a cause for the struggles, but the team has yielded 11 third-period goals in that span, including three each on the road against Harvard and Dartmouth.
The grit and pride demonstrated by each Engineer that has suited up for the last handful of games has certainly been commendable. It is clear, from watching the games, that everyone on the team has left everything they had on the ice for every game. Given the circumstances, though, any talk of personnel changes among the coaching staff or a desire to “change the direction of the program” is grossly inappropriate at this juncture. The only thing to do now is hope the Engineers get completely healthy as the regular season gives way to the playoffs, so everyone can see what this team is capable of.
