Middlebury was defeated by Wesleyan
7-10 today. The conditions were forboding in
the hours before the game with heavy rain and black skies, but the skies
cleared and we survived with only light rain.
Although we have a lot of work to do, we are not as far away from being pretty good as it may appear with a couple of losses in a
row. Consider these statistics from today (not guaranteed 100% accurate,
but close): we won 14-21 face offs; we outshot them 48-25;
we cleared 15-19, they only cleared 16 of 31; 33gb's
for Midd, 24 for Wesleyan. Unfortunately, their goalie made 19
saves, ours made 6 and the we lost the key stat, the
score. Wesleyan plays zone the entire game and it was
one of the better days we have had moving the ball vs. the zone; we
generated plenty of opportunities while also possessing the ball for long
stretches. At times we were inept shooting,
other times their goalie deserves a lot of credit. He was the 2nd Team All League goalie last year behind a senior and
played like an All League goalie today, making all of the saves he should while
also making some great saves. We also failed to convert a couple of
unsettled situations that would have been nice to put away. If you are
playing a zone team with a very good goalie it is
difficult to put up a lot of goals in a hurry. The way
to do so is to ride them and come up with some fast break/unsettled possibities.
We don't have a lot of room for error with our team
right now and we made some critical errors down the stretch, going for some
checks and missing, and falling asleep on the crease for an easy goal
late. Otherwise we played good solid defense and we did not have to play
a lot of it given our face offs, riding and ball possession.
The bright spot is that we did do a lot of good things
in the game, so at least we know we have the ability to win. It would be
worse if we were losing simply because we were not very good. We have
tomorrow off, a practice Monday and then a game at RPI Tuesday, so we do not
have a lot of time to lick our wounds!