We lost another heartbreaker by a goal yesterday in front of a big Colby crowd and on what turned out to be a pretty nice day for a game up in Maine.  That's now 5 one goal losses in our last 6 NESCAC games, the six losses are by a combined 7 goals.  The team continues to show a ton of heart and belief in one another even after what we've been through but unfortunately we came up just short.

 

Colby did a really nice job facing off against us yesterday, their kid was able to neutralize Brian Foster for most of the game which is something we haven't seen in almost a month.  Credit Coach Brakeley and Brian for making some adjustments over the course of the game and winning 5 of the last 7 draws in the 4th quarter and OT.

 

Any overtime loss is difficult to deal with but when you hold a team to 27 shots and out ground ball them 40-28, you expect to win the game.  We took 43 shots ourselves and most of them were very good looks at the cage.  Even though I had their goalie for 10 saves and ours for 4, it didn't feel like their kid was the difference in the game.  We hit him a few times and he didn't make any spectacular saves, we just didn't finish well.

 

After getting an early lead we found ourselves down by two goals for what seemed like most of the game.  After turning the ball over with just over a minute left and still down by two things didn't look promising for us when Colby cleared the ball and called timeout in their offensive end.  Off the timeout our guys executed the double team with our goalie out of the hoop which led to a transition goal for us by Stew Kerr with 52 seconds left .  On the ensuing face off we left our defensive box early before possession was called. It actually turned out to help us as we were able to get another double team on the ball off the whistle and put it down again.   After we touched it in the box we were able to get a timeout and Brian Ayers made a play. Brian started with the ball on the wing with a pole on him and went right to the hoop, Colby had been slow to slide most of the day so he got right to the doorstep and put it home with less than 10 seconds to go which sent us to OT.

 

We won the face off in OT, and before they were able to substitute their defensive personnel on the field Andrew Metros generated a nice look from about 7 yards but their goalie made the save.  We then had another pretty good look by Brian Ayers that just missed wide.  We then turned it over and Colby came down and found their crease man for his 7th goal of the game.

 

We'll now focus all of our efforts on our preparation for the Ephs in what will be our last game of the year.  It's a strange feeling to know when our season is going to end and to have it be so early in the spring.  We're going to do everything we can to send our seniors off with a win and to keep the Thomsen Trophy here in Middlebury.

 

You'd like to think that playing the last placed team in NESCAC with only one league win would be an easier match up!  However to put it all in perspective, Williams just beat Union a few weeks ago, then the #5 team in the country.  So, we'll have another tough match up on our hands on Wednesday and look forward to the opportunity to get back out there one more time with these guys.