This author isn’t expecting any belated goodwill holiday greetings from Catamount Country, for the collective truth he shall tell stings like an onslaught of sleet on a hike through the subzero New England trails.
Vermont sure seemed to have a pleasurable allotment of early gifts coming into a season that promised to be another chapter in a steady, exponential growth process. They were returning a whopping 16 skaters, including all seven of last year’s double-digit point-getters, along with a decent and seasoned stopper in Kristen Olychuk. Not to mention, the month of October was stocked with nothing but eight home games.
But ever since lunging out to a 4-1-0 start, the Catamounts proceeded to split that home stretch and are now an acrid 5-10-1 overall on the year, coupled with a decisively last-place league record at 1-7-1. They have already lost two season series, having been swept by Northeastern and lost twice to Maine, and they surrendered four out of seven points distributed over their three annual meetings with Boston College.
Olychuk has been the only goaltender to see any action in the Catamount crease, even though she is all but a bottom-feeder in every major statistic. Still, to cut her some necessary slack, UVM’s urgent bane lies plainly within the offense, which has only sprouted for a few fleeting production sprees, has been shut out on seven occasions, and, other than BC, is the only WHEA brigade to be averaging fewer than two goals per game.
Kailey Nash has been a pleasant surprise in her first year since converting from defense to forward. The sophomore has charged up an 8-4-12 log through 16 games, including three of the team’s five game-clinchers and seven power play strikes for a four-way tie for the national lead. But she has gone egregiously unsupported and has seen her own productivity decelerate since around Halloween.
Veteran leaders Brittany Nelson, Chelsea Furlani, and Celeste Doucet are all on about the same scoring pace as they have been in years past. But the same, for whatever reason, cannot be said about the likes of the more youthful and more leaned-on Peggy Wakeham, Erin Barley-Maloney, and Teddy Fortin, who stamped 22, 21, and 19 respective points last season as the team’s top three scorers. So far this year, those three have combined for a mere 16 points, barely a quarter of what they aggregated in 2008-09.
Freshman forward Erin Wente is currently the only Catamount with a positive plus/minus rating, and she has but one solitary goal and assist through 14 games. Fortin likewise has two points to speak of while six regulars have one or none.
There is yet more problematic data. UVM is the least-disciplined team in the league with a nightly average of 12.8 penalty minutes. To that point, Olychuk’s data would not be quite as dented if there were fewer penalties to kill and fewer opposing power play goals, of which there have been 16 out of 74 opportunities. And maybe, if they had a little more even-strength or player-up time to work with, the Catamounts would have an easier time thawing out their collective twigs, which have shot less frequently than any other Hockey East team at a median of 23.1 bids per game.
At least the agenda for Part II of the season is clear enough. Everyone knows what needs to be addressed, and how, and why. The gap separating Vermont’s basement bunker and Connecticut’s seventh-place slot is six points, the broadest separation between any two teams in the Hockey East standings. And to be sure, regaining that ground cannot technically be ruled out yet, especially since the Catamounts have at least two games in hand on five of their rivals.
Then again, look at the competition they still have to confront. They haven’t even begun their season series with almighty New Hampshire, which across the board has been the direct opposite of what their cross-border rivals have achieved. And most everyone Vermont faces will be salivating with just as much thirst after first round home ice or a first-round bye, whereas they can ask for little more than a little extra ice post-February 21.
The Catamounts’ recent track record and attitude, on paper anyway, suggests they have every means to salvage their dignity before they shut down again this spring. But not all of that dignity will likely be sustained or recovered if the inevitable cramming session does not amount to that icebreaking postseason passport they all promised themselves last summer.
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