The University of Denver men’s hockey team isn’t making excuses for its mediocre first half of the season.
They have to play better on a more consistent basis.
“Certainly, we want to get on a little bit of a roll going forward,” said head coach George Gwozdecky. “This whole win-one-lose-one, that’s not what we like; that’s not what we’re used to; and that’s not what we’re going to settle for. We need to be able to make up some ground on the teams ahead of us. The only way of doing that is winning consecutive games. We’re preparing this week to get on that roll.”
Despite key injuries to its starting goalie and its third best scorer, the team remains ranked in both national polls – No. 13 in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll and No. 14 in the USCHO.com poll – and still very much in contention in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association standings, where they are currently tied for 6th.
The team concludes the first half of the season this weekend with a road series against unranked St. Cloud State beginning Friday at 6:37 p.m. MT.
With a clean sweep of the Huskies, the Pioneers can leap into third place of the conference standings heading into their break.
“This league is pretty close,” said Gwozdecky. “We can put ourselves in third place if we do what we believe we are capable of doing.”
The Pioneers (7-6-3, 5-4-3 WCHA) have been drastically inconsistent against lesser opponents such as SCSU (6-8-4, 4-5-3), sweeping Minnesota State (5-12-1, 2-9-1) in October and then going 0-1-1 against Michigan Tech (9-8-1, 6-7-1) the following weekend.
Similarly, DU cruised past unranked Princeton 3-0 at the opening game of this year’s Denver Cup Classic only to fall 4-2 the next night to Miami University.
In December, the Pioneers haven’t proved to be any more consistent. The team lost a hard fought road match against rival No. 7 Colorado College (9-5, 7-5) in overtime on Dec. 2 and then went on to split with unranked Bemidji State (7-9-2, 5-7-2) last weekend, giving way to the Beavers first ever victory against the Pioneers on Saturday night.
Since Nov. 19, the team has been playing without starting goalie Adam Murray, who was hurt during a 3-3 tie against Nebraska Omaha at Magness Arena.
Freshman Juho Olkinuora has played strong on what has become an alarmingly thin roster for goalies. Prior to the season, Denver lost Sam Brittain, its starting goalie from the 2010-2011 season, until at least January. The sophomore’s return hasn’t been decided yet.
Olkinuora, a native of Finland, made 38 saves against Princeton and recorded his first career shutout on Nov. 25, but has only won one game since as the Pioneers have slid in the national rankings from No. 9 to as their season’s lowest rank at No. 14.
So far this season, Olkinuora has allowed 17 goals while making 201 saves (92.2 percent) in nine games played.
“I look at our goaltending right now, [Juho] is continually getting better and hasn’t stopped competing,” said Gwozdecky. “He’s a rookie, we’re not trying to compare him to a veteran. Were not trying to compare him to what Marc Cheverie did as a junior. This young man has been thrown into a situation that we couldn’t have foreseen. He’s done a wonderful job, not only staying competitive but staying positive and responding from mistakes.”
While defense has been an issue in the first of the season, the team has had its fair share of offensive struggles as well.
The team is a dismal 12-65 (18.5 percent) on power play opportunities this season and has allowed opponents to convert almost 20 percent of the time (15 of 76 attempts).
“The big disappoint from this last weekend was that we were unable to score on the powerplay,” said Gwozdecky. “We had some great looks and some bad looks, but we’ve had to change the pattern of our pattern play due to injury, so it’s developing.”
The team sidelined it’s third best scorer, sophomore Beau Bennett, prior to the series against Bemidji.
Bennett has 13 points on four goals and nine assists, recording seven of those points on the power play, which is third on the team.
Gwozdecky announced before last Friday’s game that Bennett had surgery on the injured wrist Thursday and would need for the next six to eight weeks off to recover.
“The news we got going onto the bus Thursday to go to the airport, regarding Beau Bennett, was not good news and that certainly changes our offensive scheme going forward,” said Gwozdecky.
