When you are the two-time defending national champions and have just established a new NCAA unbeaten streak (currently at 41 games), you might think that everything is perfectly aligned and calibrated with the 17-0-0 Hobart Statesmen. Not so for Coach Mark Taylor and staff who have a very deep roster that competes hard and has obviously found success on the ice, but the focus continues to be forward looking and on how to be better.
“You can always do things better,” stated Taylor. “Whether its our face-off percentage wins, power play or penalty kill or line combinations, we are always tweaking things a little bit to find improvement that might help us in each game. While we always skate and rotate seven defensemen who are used to playing with different partners, the forward lines are very fluid with opportunities to put our best groups together and give us the balance and depth we want to see in our rolling four lines.”
It would be hard to argue with the Statesmen’s success this season to date which includes seventy-nine goals for and a paltry seventeen against in seventeen contests. The goaltending duo of Damon Beaver (9GP – 1.00 GAA – .960 SP – 3SO) and Mavrick Goyer (8GP – 1.00 GAA – .949 SP – 4 SO) have combined for seven shutouts so far this season and have surrendered one-third of the total goals against on the penalty kill this season. The defensive group is agile, physical and plays with good offensive skills while the forwards have been productive up and down the lineup with the entire roster boasting a positive plus/minus statistic. Knowing every team that Hobart plays is bringing their absolute best, the Statesmen have continued to stay focused and bring their best hockey in each and every game.
“Last weekend we played on home ice for the first time since we played Elmira before the semester break,” said Taylor. “It was great to be at home and the guys really felt it as we came out with a lot of energy against Norwich. We always want to play a good first period, a better second period and a great third period and I thought we did that on Friday night and it carried over into Saturday. You see so many upsets across college hockey like Dubuque beating Adrian and Chatham knocking off Geneseo last week. I like the discipline and maturity of our team that even when we have to move players around or put someone new in the group, they are ready to go and maintain our high level of play. There is a long way to go with a lot of points available in the next four weekends so we are focused on Albertus Magnus who we will face for the first time this weekend in their rink. You must respect every opponent, but we go in with confidence and expect a good battle from Kyle’s [Wallack] team who knocked off Babson twice and split with Salve Regina last weekend.”
As two-time defending NEHC champions, Hobart is comfortably on top of the standings today but is not assuming they have a lock on the current spot nor the conference championship.
“There are a lot of good teams in this conference,” stated Taylor. “We know we are going to get everyone’s best and that will certainly ramp up come playoff time. We have the conference championship trophy in our locker room, and we would really like to keep it there knowing this is the final season of the NEHC in D-III hockey. While we didn’t have the unbeaten streak as a team goal, and it is a nice one to have for this group, the league title is naturally a key goal for this team and especially the senior class that always wants to be just a little bit better than the previous group. There is a lot of hockey still to be played and I believe that some of our minor adjustments are only going to help us playing our best game at the most important time of the season.”
The Statesmen have just eight conference games remaining starting at Albertus Magnus this weekend before hosting Southern Maine and New England College and then closing out with two games at Babson. March brings the NEHC tournament and a likely opportunity to defend their NCAA title. Before all that, the tweaking will continue to help make the nation’s best team even better when it matters most.
