In late October, after a foul 5-1 falter on home ice cost his club a potential three-year reign as the owners of the Mayor’s Cup, Providence head coach Bob Deraney insisted, “We’ve got good enough players. We just need to get the job done.”
That actually sums up the better part of the Friars’ first half, at which point they stand at an iffy 5-7-7. Two requisite ingredients were missing in the Brown bout and for nearly the duration of a vinegary 0-4-4 winless streak –and neither of those was a full, healthy roster. Rather, they were levelheaded confidence and incentive.
When Providence does put those items to use, they can sparkplug any allotment of players and talent in any location against any adversary. Exhibit A: a 4-1 lashing of nemesis New Hampshire earlier this month, the first regulation loss a Hockey East team ever pinned on the Wildcats in Durham.
On the other hand, the Friars’ desperation that bolstered such a milestone owed largely to the fact that they lost valuable ground from mid-October and all through November.
To complement that shortage of achievement is an array of explanations. There was a short bench brought on by a rash of midseason injuries. There was a brief, but costly dose of overconfidence brought on by a 3-1-1 start, one of the statistically better starts the program has experienced in the decade-plus reign of Bob Deraney. And to follow that up, there was an equally detrimental scoop of self-doubt brought on when the aforementioned overconfidence seemed to get the better of them.
Amidst all of the turbulence, PC regained its dignity well before it restored any viability, of which it will naturally have more to make up in the New Year. Out of their first 19 contests, a whopping 10 have been against nationally ranked adversaries. An unfavorable 2-5-3 showing aside, their better efforts tend to come from facing the certified national heavyweights. Only one of those five losses was decided by more than two goals, and that was when defending NCAA champion Wisconsin spontaneously ignited to score thrice within the final three minutes of regulation.
All things considered, the three-week hibernation was semi-untimely for PC, seeing as a few practical aspects were finally beginning to thaw out. Leading up to mid-November, sophomore center Ashley Cottrell –who has upped her productivity rate from what it was last season with a 10-11-21 transcript- was the team’s lone encouraging constant.
But lately, Cottrell has found a few flightful wings in Nicole Anderson and Laura Veharanta. Anderson, a towering rookie out of the Minnesota high school ranks, assumed the left side on the top line and power play unit after initially playing center herself while Veharanta, last year’s lone unanimous selection to the Hockey East All-Rookie team, was combating a slump when she was assigned to the right.
Together, Anderson, Cottrell, and Veharanta have collaborated on four power play goals in six games. Veharanta pumped in another with partial help from Cottrell and broke for the holiday with a refreshing six-game point streak in the works. Anderson has slugged in six goals, all assisted by Cottrell, since the assignment.
Now all PC needs is to ensure they have kept that trinity’s chemistry in a deep freeze of preservatives and generate a couple of duplicates throughout the rest of the depth chart. That ought to better their odds of improving the dead-even goals-for/goals-against differential (2.37 apiece), to say nothing of their record and reputation.
The Friars figure to play at least six more games against national superpowers –namely leaderboard mainstays Cornell, New Hampshire, Harvard, and Northeastern- and maybe a few more depending on who might make a surprise pole-vault.
Actually, that surprise party could be them, if they’re good. Good as in consistently, notably, and productively good.
As demanding as it may sound, they Friars will need to win at least four of its five remaining interleague games to really stabilize their posture on the national landscape. Obviously, a sound performance within conference boundaries cannot hurt either, but it cannot be banked on, as this program has repeatedly learned in recent years.
One of Deraney’s enduring near-catchphrases revolves around his team having a brittle “margin of error” and now would be the time to reprise that classic homily. Ditto the assertion, “We’ve got good enough players. We just need to get the job done.”
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