Ah, the New Year.
A time to make resolutions that you may or may not keep.
For most of us, these resolutions are merely suggestions at self-betterment that might not even have any outwardly tangible signs of change.
Luckily for a college hockey coach who decides to make some resolutions for their team, there should be some visible results at season’s end, in the form of more wins than losses.
Ideally, MANY more wins than losses.
For Bowling Green, it was important for the Falcons to see the second half of the season as a clean break with the first.
“We said on Monday when we got back to practice, ‘Hey, we’re closing the books on the first half of the season,’” BGSU coach Ty Eigner said Tuesday. “We talked honestly about the first half. We own our results and our statistics, our goals for, goals against, power play, all our stats, our won-loss record. We own all that. But now our focus is the second half. We want to build on how we’ve been playing and improve on that in the second half.”
In all, the first half was pretty good to the Falcons, who finished 2021 with a 9-8-3 record and have scored 60 goals (against 63 allowed). In CCHA play, they’re 6-5-1 – good enough for fifth in what is a very tight middle of the table. Considering where people thought they’d be at the start of the season, after losing so many players to graduation or the transfer portal, that’s a very solid start. But it’s not something the Falcons are necessarily happy with.
“But all in all, I think we’re not satisfied with where we’re at,” Eigner said. “We felt like this group had the potential to be a really good team, hopefully what would happen with all those new pieces is that we were playing our best hockey at the end of the year, and that’s still the goal.”
The four games leading up to the end of the year perhaps encapsulated best just how close the Falcons think they are to being a great team as opposed to just a good one. Just before the players went home for Christmas break, they dropped both games of a home-and-home series against instate rivals Ohio State by a single goal (4-3 in Columbus and 3-2 in Bowling Green). In both contests, the Falcons couldn’t hang on in the third period.
Then, after they took a week off for Christmas, the Falcons returned a little earlier than most teams and traveled to Milwaukee for the Kwik Trip Holiday Faceoff. In the first game of that tournament, against Providence, Bowling Green was in striking distance until the third period, when the Friars scored three goals and won 6-2.
BG was able to salvage the tournament finale against Yale, 2-1 in the third-place game, to close out their 2021 with a win. But Eigner said all four of those games were on the table for the Falcons, and to not win the first three was frustrating for everyone.
“Frustrating, yes, absolutely. Players were frustrated, coaches were frustrated. Not with each other but frustrated that sometimes, sports are unfair,” he said. “You can play really good and not win. In our sport, goaltenders have the potential to steal games and if the goaltender is the best player on the ice for a certain team that gives them a really good opportunity to win. We did a lot of really good things against Providence and against Ohio State. So we really want to give the guys some things to build on.”
With the foundation laid in 2021, the Falcons go into 2022 hoping to build on that in the CCHA standings. The remainder of their 14 games are all conference matchups. And with such a tightly-contested league, there’s a chance for the Falcons to gain – or lose – ground very quickly.
Bowling Green is currently in fifth place, with 19 points. But they’re only five points behind second-place Bemidji State. Second and sixth place are separated by just six points.
“Obviously Mankato has done a really good job and put them in a position where everybody’s going to have to chase them,” Eigner said. “But I think if you look at the standings, two through six right now is very tight. I think the difference between two and six is basically a weekend series.”
The Falcons have played a series against everyone in the conference aside from Michigan Tech, who are third in the conference (just a point behind Bemidji). Lake Superior State is a point ahead of BG while NMU is a point behind in sixth.
“It’s really tight. All those teams right there are thinking the same exact same thing. If we can get on a run, if we can start playing well, if we can get hot, we can climb the standings,” Eigner said. “We all play each other, which is a good thing. You’re going to have opportunities to gain on people that are in front of you or separate yourselves from people that are behind you.”
The first test for the Falcons is this weekend, when they travel to St. Thomas. BGSU swept the Tommies when they met on Nov. 5-6 – a pair of fairly-close contests that the Falcons ultimately swept, 4-2 and 3-0. Eigner says he thinks the Tommies are going to be even tougher the second time around.
“Our expectation is, they’re going to be excited to play in their rink,” Eigner said. “When they played here, especially that first game, they were in the game the whole time. … I don’t know if they’ve played anybody two times, so we may be the first opportunity for them, so maybe it will look different the second time.
“Obviously, they’re going to be at home, so that gives them some more confidence. I would assume they’re going to be excited to play (us) and open up the second half and if that means they have a chip on their shoulder, we have to be prepared for that.”
