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Tiger Men's Hockey in Deep Freeze After Pair of Losses to Merrimack
By Bill Alden
Steve Slaton clearly didn't have a good night at his office at Baker Rink last Friday.
After Slaton and teammates on the Princeton University men's hockey team fell 5-1 to Merrimack before a home crowd of 1,496, Slaton emerged from the Tigers' locker room with his left wrist encased in a jumbo-sized bag of ice.
Based on his furrowed brow and pained grimace, it appeared that senior captain's pride hurt more than his wrist.
"It's not that we didn't have our best effort tonight, we didn't have much of an effort at all," said Slaton, a 5'9 185-pound defenseman from Plymouth, Minn. "Tonight it looked liked the guys were still on break playing pond hockey back home."
The stat sheet painted an accurate picture of Princeton's ugly effort in the loss to Merrimack, which brought a mediocre 5-10-1 record into the evening.
The Tigers were outshot 29-15 by Merrimack and lost 37 of 53 faceoffs as they dropped to 5-12. Princeton's only score came on a third period goal by Dustin Sproat, which came on a feed from Grant Goeckner-Zoeller.
The Tigers' moribund effort was particularly galling since the squad was looking for its first win since its dramatic 2-1 win over Harvard on December 16.
Princeton had played in the Dodge Holiday Classic on December 20-21 where they lost 9-0 to Minnesota and 5-3 to Miami (Ohio).
"It's real frustrating," said Slaton, who is second on the Tigers in scoring with 10 points and leads the team in power play goals with three. "Coming off Harvard, everyone was flying high. Then we go out and throw away a couple of big opportunities."
A visibly frustrated Princeton head coach Len Quesnelle clenched his teeth as he analyzed his teams apparent lack of fire.
"We haven't played very well in the last three games," said Quesnelle, whose misery was compounded a night later when his club dropped a 3-0 decision to Merrimack to conclude the weekend series.
"To try to explain it or describe why is very difficult. We're not making it easy on ourselves. We're not playing very well."
Quesnelle's ire was heightened by the fact that Merrimack is hardly a national power.
"They're a hardworking team, a good team that does a lot of simple things very well," said Quesnelle, referring to the Warriors, who are mired in the middle of the pack in the Hockey East league standings. "They outcompeted us in our own rink tonight. That to me is unacceptable."
The fourth-year head coach had been hoping that the Tigers' string of four non-conference games would help prime the squad for their East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC) battles to come. The Tigers are 5-6 in league play and are currently in a three-way tie for second in the 12-team circuit.
"I was looking at these four games as a great opportunity for ourselves," maintained Quesnelle, whose club is 2-23-1 in its last 26 non-conference games and was outscored 22-4 in their last four non-ECAC encounters.
"These games outside our conference are important, it's a chance for us to get better. I think it's the same preparation, regardless of who we're playing."
With the Tigers getting back into the ECAC fray when they host St. Lawrence on January 9 and Clarkson on January 10, Slaton knows the Tigers have a lot of work to do in order to be competitive.
"There's a whole list of things, a pretty long list," said Slaton in reflecting what improvements Princeton must make. "We really just have to come out and play our game. Work hard, hit."
If the Tigers don't pick up the tempo, they're going to be hit with a lot of losses as the winter unfolds.
