Nobody except sophomore forward Erin Wente has scored five goals. No one other than junior Kailey Nash has reached five assists. No one has any more than seven points to her credit after 18 games. Everybody is in the red under the plus/minus heading.
With a roster limited to only 16 skaters this season, it is easy to excuse the Vermont Catamounts as understaffed. But considering the presence of six seniors who ought to be thirsting for a breakthrough –like the one that was anticipated during their sophomore year and the one that seemed inevitable for their junior campaign- it is more operative to brand this team a stock of underachievers.
Ironically, the Catamounts do have enough padded personnel –namely 20 individuals- to ice a quorum on game night. The kicker is four of them are goalies, much more than they need in that department. It’s all fitting, given the palpable pluses and problems with Tim Bothwell’s program.
Like 2010 graduate Kristen Olychuck before her, rookie stopper Roxanne Douville has toiled sympathetically to keep her team afloat. She has been rewarded on the stats sheet with an even 2.00 goals against average and .932 save percentage through 13 appearances.
But on the scoreboard in the standings, there is hardly any due compensation to speak of. Douville boasts a 2-5-6 record while the team stands at 2-8-8. Only once has she allowed four goals in a game and only twice has she taken the albatross for a three-goal differential.
In its eight tying efforts, Vermont has scored first on seven occasions and blown a total of eight one-goal leads along with a 3-1 advantage that devolved into a 3-3 knot against Rensselaer on Oct. 8.
Before going on break, the Catamounts barely salvaged a vital Hockey East two-point package, zapping Maine in overtime, 4-3, only after they had spilled a 3-1 lead in the third period. Without that, they would have been winless in league action with less than half of the schedule left to work with.
The one time Vermont has either moved ahead by three notches or maintained a lead through the buzzer was in a 4-1 lashing of Yale Oct. 22.
On the flipside, the Catamounts have conceded the first goal on nine occasions and have fallen behind a mere 10 times overall. Four times, they came back to draw a knot, however temporary it might usually be. They have never surmounted even the smallest deficit to usurp the lead. And they have allowed the opposition to break away for a multi-point cushion seven times, ultimately losing each of those games.
One would like to shuffle back through the not-too-distant history books and believe that this is a much more capable bunch. Of the six seniors, only defender Saleah Morrison is on track to set a career high in point production, which would be merely 11 at that. Lindsey Cashman already has three points to her credit, but only after mustering one over the course of 66 games in her first three seasons.
As for the once-established scorers, defender Peggy Wakeham has slugged home four goals and zero helpers, which leaves her lightyears shy of her 22-point sophomore campaign. Forward Teddy Fortin has three strikes on the year and a cumulative eight points dating back to the start of last season –this after she had charged up 12 goals and 31 points over her first two seasons. Barring a desperate acceleration, forward Celeste Doucet projects to finish with no more than 13 points, one short of a career high.
Nash is one of but four Catamounts on track to even break double-digits. With a goal and five assists, she could charge up as many as 11 or 12 points by season’s end. But everyone is still wondering what happened to the Nash who, as a sophomore, accepted a conversion from defense to forward and started the 2009-10 campaign with an 8-4-12 transcript –including seven power play strikes- in the first 14 games. In the 36 games since then, she has gone 1-6-7.
Vermont may as well take its next five games, all interleague engagements beginning with a visit from Dartmouth this Wednesday, as an extra preseason. The long-barren offense needs to rediscover its long-lost rhythm and be ready to lay it out with no qualms as soon as it begins the homestretch of the Hockey East playoff derby in Connecticut Jan. 14.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond the Dashers
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