Ice hockey team continues to struggle

Bobby Colla, Sports Editor

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Matt Whalen, Layout Editor

The Hudson Valley Ice Hockey team dropped their seventh game of the season, losing to Broome Community College 5-1 Saturday evening at home.

The team has struggled most of the season only winning two of their nine games played so far.  The Vikings finished last season with ten wins and entered the tournament as the number four seed.

In the first period of Saturday’s game, Hudson Valley fell behind by three goals. “It was a lack of focus,” said Head Coach Matt Alvey.

The team gave up one goal in each of the other two but the three in the first period hurt the most.  The team has given up at least two goals in every game this year.

“We’re really paying for our mistakes,” said Alvey. “We’re struggling in our defensive zones. If we aren’t scoring we are definitely going to have a tough time winning games,” he said.

The mistakes keep adding up for the team as their defense continues to struggle and control the opponents offense making mistakes that cost them goals.

“We’ll make three mistakes and the puck will be in our net three times,” said Alvey.

“Going into every game I think we have a possibility of winning,” said Alvey.

The team had many chances to score goals and had many set up plays that fell short.

“We’ve had some breaks where we didn’t capitalize and we couldn’t put the puck in the net,” Alvey said about the teams missed opportunities this season.

There were 20 total penalties in the game, 11 of them on the Vikings. “It was a little bit chippy today,” said Alvey.

“I was unhappy with our team’s discipline. They’re better than that,” he said.

Alvey said, “It was just a tough day for us. I can’t really explain it, but it’s been that way all year.”

This year’s team is fairly new, losing two of their star players from last season, which gave the Vikings a bit of a disadvantage going into this season.  The team has struggled setting up plays and defensive schemes, which has led to struggles on both ends of the ice.

“We’ve had a bit of a learning curve this year. We’re taking a little bit longer to learn the systems this year,” said Alvey.

The struggling hockey team keeps finding ways to try and regroup each game when they fall behind, but can’t seem to find their rhythm.

“They just weren’t moving their feet,” said Alvey. “We went into the locker room to try and motivate them into some positive things,” he said.

Although the Vikings have lost seven games this season, a good amount have been close calls and have been lost last in the game.

“We’ve been in just about every game this year,” said Alvey.

The Vikings look to find their stride as this season heads toward the final stretch.  The team has three home games this upcoming week, where they will face Mohawk Valley on Tuesday and a double header with Erie on Saturday and Sunday.