The mens hockey team continued its season-long struggles over the weekend, dropping back-to-back home games to Wesleyan and No. 13 Trinity. The losses to their two NESCAC foes makes five consecutive losses for the Jumbos, and with just three of 13 home games remaining, the team is at risk of going winless at home. This weekends results put the Jumbos at 3-13 overall and 1-9 in the conference.
Sundays game against Trinity posed a daunting task for the team. After going 59 minutes without a goal against Wesleyan, the Jumbos had little time to recover before facing the top-ranked team in the NESCAC.
Late in the first period, senior Larry Bero, Trinitys stay-at-home defenseman, scored his first goal of the season. With seven minutes remaining in the second period, sophomore John Hawkrigg, the top-scorer in the NESCAC, converted on a five-on-three opportunity to put Trinity up 2-0. Four minutes later, Tufts junior Andrew White responded with a power play goal of his own, to make it a 2-1 game heading in the third period.
Tufts, however, was unable to carry over the momentum. Hawkrigg netted his second goal of the game early in the third, and Tufts sophomore Keith Campbells score to make it 3-2 game proved to be inadequate. Two late goals by Trinity ensured 5-2 victory.
The Jumbos outshot the Bantams 33-31 and kept it close against the top offense in the NESCAC. Furthermore, coach Brian Murphy took some risks to try and spark some offense after its performance on Saturday.
After the loss to Wesleyan, and only scoring one goal, coach made some changes to the lines and that helped a little bit against Trinity, senior Kyle Gallegos said. But it is hard to form chemistry when lines are changed in the middle of the weekend.
If the Trinity loss showed the flaws in Tufts conference-worst defense, Saturdays game against Wesleyan showed that the offense has its own problems it needs to fix. Despite struggling against Trinity, senior goaltender Greg Jenkins turned away 30 of the 32 of the shots he faced against Wesleyan. But on the offensive end, the Jumbos failed to get anything going.
It just seemed we were short on fight, sophomore defenseman Brian Ouellette said. We struggled getting on the rush, and our passes were just not connecting.
Wesleyan senior Keith Beuhler started off the scoring with a first period goal, and classmate Brad Improta gave the Cardinals a 2-0 lead early in the second period. In goal, freshman Dawson Sprigings proved to be too much for the Jumbos, keeping the Jumbos off the scoreboard for 59 minutes.
Ouellettes unassisted goal in the final minute was enough to prevent the shutout and give the Jumbos a chance to salvage a tie. Wesleyan, however, would cap off the scoring at 3-1 with an empty-netter in the final moments of the game.
As was the case in the Trinity game, the Jumbos kept a close scoring margin with the Cardinals, getting 32 shots on goal to Wesleyans 33. Despite the numbers hinting that the Jumbos are due for more shots to hit the back of the net, the eye test reveals more disconcerting problems surrounding their dearth of goals.
I think part of it is that we have played some quality goalies and some of it is we are getting unlucky, Gallegos said. But it comes down to the fact that we are not getting the quality shots we need.
For the Jumbos, this weekend serves as another setback to their goal of reaching the NESCAC playoffs. Having already faced each team at least once, the Jumbos are two games back from the final playoff spot, with ten games left.
We said after the [Trinity] game that we are just past the halfway mark in our NESCAC games, Gallegos said. We are still very confident we can make the playoffs.
The Jumbos look to turn things around this weekend as they hit the road to take on Middlebury and No. 9 Williams.
