Our late charge fell just short yesterday against the Jumbos.  After we gave them an 8-3 lead we picked things up late in the 3rd quarter and made it a game.  Our guys played hard and are very close to being a good team, we're just not quite there yet.

Some positives from yesterday were that we continue to make huge strides with our face off unit, we went 15 for 22 yesterday against the top face off man in the league.  The Bowdoin fogo was actually the league leader before we went 80% against him.   Definitely an encouraging sign.

We had a few nice performances from some seniors yesterday, Heath Townsend played well in his first career start at close defense which also happened to be his first significant minutes this season.  We also witnessed Jack Balaban's best game of his career.  Jack was in the starting line up earlier in the year but hasn't been playing as much lately, he made the most of his opportunities yesterday and played a huge role in getting us going in the 3rd quarter.  He finished with two goals and two assists on the day.

So far this season we've faced our fair share of adversity both self inflicted as well as some bad luck along the way.  If you look at the box score from yesterday you'll see some key names missing from the lineup, a few because of injuries and a few that weren't dressed due to violating team rules.  Of those injured, after having Matt Rayner back on the field for Bowdoin, it doesn't look like we'll have him back anytime soon.  We'll certainly miss Matt's leadership on the field on game days but what he's brought to this team so far this year from the sideline has been absolutely incredible.  The maturity he's shown in handling not only his physical setbacks but our team's as well by doing everything he can to be there for his teammates is exactly what you'd hope to get from one of your captains.  He's been the definition of the servant leader, completely selfless for his team so far this year.

We also had a tough break the other day when first-year Michael Ford went down in practice with what turned out to be a torn ACL.  Michael was the one who scored our third goal in the first half against Bowdoin to put us up 3-2 and was starting to emerge as a solid contributor for us these past few weeks.  Seeing him go down in practice felt worse than any loss on the scoreboard this year….  The thing I'll say about Michael and the good news for our team is that his best quality can't be taken away by a physical injury.  In all of my years as a player and as a coach, I've never been around a freshman capable of becoming not only a leader but quite possibly, THE emotional leader of a team, until I met Michael.  We're fortunate to have such a great person in our program.

Given the summary I just wrote up, I'll end on this final thought.  If you had told me in the beginning of the year, we'd be going into the Tufts game with all the guys we were missing and what our record would be going into the game, that we'd be down 8-3 in the third quarter… and then have a few chances to tie it down the stretch, I wouldn't have believed you.  Our team continues to get better every day, despite all of the adversity we've faced along the way.  My feeling and hope for the team is that if we keep working and believing in each other that good things will happen down the road.  I also believe we're learning more about ourselves and more lessons about what it means to be a part of a team this year than in any other I can remember.

While we'll still have a bunch of guys out injured this weekend and just as many suspended, the game that going into the season I felt that we had the worst chance of winning is now the game I feel we have our best shot at winning when we step on the field tomorrow.