The Colorado Mesa University’s ice hockey team went 1-1 over the weekend against Montana State University (MSU). The Mavericks won the first game by a score of 12-5 but couldn’t keep the momentum going in the second game as they lost 2-7.
“We didn’t work hard, they outworked us across the board,” Head coach Tim Winegard said. “They outworked us, we didn’t come to play and that’s what happens, you pay the price when you don’t come to play, and you don’t put in an honest effort.”
After falling behind by two goals in the first period, the Mavericks were never able to recover. Despite having two goals on the power play, both coming with two men advantages, they were unsuccessful on five other opportunities.
The penalty kill worked okay on the day, as they only allow one goal in four situations having the disadvantage.
“Our penalty kill was fine, our power play was terrible,” Winegard said. “Yeah we scored two goals on the power play, but we had a lot more chances and we were awful. So no the power play was terrible.”
The amount of shots that each team had were balanced throughout the course of the game as both teams had a good amount of opportunities. Both teams finished with nearly equal percentages on the power play with MSU converting on 25 percent of them versus CMU’s 28.5 percent.
It boiled down to even strength play where MSU scored six goals while CMU scored zero. Winegard said that his team needs to learn that they cannot take nights off.
“The only positive is to realize that you have to come to work every night and you can’t take days off or you don’t get a paycheck and that’s a positive,” Winegard said. “Sometimes you need to lose in order to understand that and we lost pretty bad tonight and hopefully that’s what we take away from it.”
The Mavericks are now 5-5-1 on the season and look to finish strong at home next weekend as they host Colorado School of Mines Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. respectively. CMU has played two games against the Orediggers in Golden, Colo. earlier this season, resulting in a tie 3-3 and a win 5-3.
