First-year Colgate coach Mike Harder knew something was amiss with his team when he sent the players home for the Christmas holiday.
The Raiders that started the year by raising a 2023 postseason championship banner hadn’t won a game at home in the Class of 1965 Arena before Thanksgiving, and while they’d beaten Cornell to go into break with a win at Lynah Rink, they’d also lost the last home game of the semester by never leading their travel partner from nearby Ithaca, N.Y.
Harder felt like he needed to remind his team of something bigger than wins or losses, so he instructed the players to ask their families for pictures of when they played 8U youth hockey. Each player combed through old photo albums with their parents and dutifully sent pictures back to Liam Conway, an assistant coach and the team’s director of hockey operations.
When the players returned home from break, they walked into the locker room and found those pictures posted on their lockers as a reminder that things shouldn’t always be taken so seriously.
“Some of the pictures were locker room shots with sweaty faces, and other guys had street hockey shots,” Harder explained. “So when the boys got back to campus, we framed them all and blew them up to put them all on top of their stalls. It was pretty cool because on one side, they had their Division I Colgate [placard], but the other had a picture of them at seven years old with smiles and crooked teeth or teeth missing. And that made a difference because it reminded the guys that hockey is fun. We wanted to remember how it was when we were seven or eight years old.
“It doesn’t always have to be pressure packed, and from that, we started making plays that started making the little bit of difference [in our performance].”
The changeover in mentality helped Colgate find its groove, and after slowly improving through overtime games against both Maine and LIU, the Raiders exploded back into the ECAC’s fight by sweeping Quinnipiac and Princeton. An overtime win over Dartmouth gave them an additional two points on the road, and after this past weekend’s sweep of Clarkson and St. Lawrence, the defending champions are finally finding the secret stuff that once lifted them to a dogpile celebration at Lake Placid’s Herb Brooks Arena.
“Historically we’ve been a team that can be a little up and down sometimes in trying to find that consistency,” Harder admitted. “But this is a good group. Don Vaughan had a great group last year that won it all, and they figured out how to [achieve consistent greatness]. They knew how to do it in the room for whatever reason, but we didn’t quite have that confidence [this year] to finish games. If we’re being honest, the goaltending that we’ve had has been great, but we’re starting to win the special teams battles and the game within the game. And if you get one power play goal and kill every penalty, you’re probably going to win that game.”
Never was that clearer than this past weekend when the Raiders swept the North Country teams because of the power play’s ability to keep the team one step ahead of an opponent. On Friday night, a Golden Knights goal early in the third period halved Colgate’s 2-0 lead that had been built through even strength goals in the second, but an Alex DiPaolo power-play goal less than two minutes after Ryan Richardson broke through for Clarkson reestablished a two-goal lead into the latter stages of the game.
The Golden Knights would eventually add a second goal with under 10 minutes remaining, but a fourth goal ensured three points stayed home in Hamilton, N.Y., before Saturday night, where another power play goal served the difference between a three-point win and a possible overtime outcome. In both games, Colgate dutifully stayed out of the box and killed whatever penalties were assessed, meaning the three power-play goals scored essentially created the difference in six points and any number less than that.
“It’s been a confidence thing,” Harder said. “[Assistant coach] Zack Badalamenti runs our power play, and he’s been doubling down on how much we’re manufacturing goals. We’re running our routes and giving guys different options. We’re crushing it on video to where the guys are bought in and want more or are hungry for more. So when we start putting pressure on them when we give up a goal, they know who and what the difference makers are in that room. We really lean on our best players, and it sounds cliche, but our best players have been our best players lately.”
The run has sent players like Ryan McGuire and Alex DiPaolo shooting back to the top of the team’s goal sheet, while Ross Mitton, a 27-point scorer from a year ago, crashed through the 20-point plateau with a goal and three assists over last weekend. Brett Chorske likewise posted a goal and an assist against Clarkson and St. Lawrence to push his point streak to four games, and both Tommy Bergsland and Daniel Panetta scored goals at various times over both wins.
Their performances – along with the rest of the team’s defense in front of goalie Carter Gylander’s 48 saves last weekend – sent the Raiders shooting to the top tier of ECAC in a year defined by weekly rises and falls. The win over Clarkson in particular moved them into third place with a one-point differential to Cornell, and both teams remain within striking distance of first place Quinnipiac thanks to the Raiders’ earlier win that sent the Bobcats tumbling into the Pairwise Rankings’ second-seeded tier.
“It’s even more complicated within a three-point system,” Harder laughed, “because you want to win cleanly. It’s exciting if you’re a fan, but last weekend, I think two wins separated second place from 12th place. It was insane, and I think there’s a little bit more separation now, but it’s not much. So we tried to break things down, shift-by-shift, to find just the habits and details to do those things while knowing results will come. It’s such a quick turnaround in our league, and it’s so unique because you have to play a different opponent every night. The other leagues don’t do that, so it can be difficult because you have to be super prepared for both nights.
“Sweeps have been nice, but they’re not the norm in this league, and it’s going to be really tough to gain that advantage.”
