{"id":137066,"date":"2022-11-17T14:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/?p=137066"},"modified":"2022-11-16T20:45:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-17T02:45:11","slug":"this-week-in-ccha-hockey-in-face-of-schedule-tweaks-ferris-state-staying-competitive-with-balance-depth-across-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2022\/11\/17\/this-week-in-ccha-hockey-in-face-of-schedule-tweaks-ferris-state-staying-competitive-with-balance-depth-across-board\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in CCHA Hockey: In face of schedule tweaks, Ferris State staying competitive with balance, depth across board"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Ferris State players celebrate a goal in their recent exhibition game against Mercyhurst (photo: Ferris State Athletics).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the NCAA finally started letting Division I teams play against one another for in-season exhibition games last season, it was a big relief to coaches across the country.<\/p>\n

Now, no longer at the whims of whatever Canadian team was able to cross the border during the first few weeks of the season, coaches have much more flexibility to schedule games whenever they can get them against whoever they want.<\/p>\n

Count Bob Daniels as one of the coaches who is very glad to be able to schedule those games. His Ferris State team took on Mercyhurst in an exhibition last weekend, beating the Lakers 5-1 in between two weekends of CCHA play in which the Bulldogs normally would have sat idle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave us a week of practice that was meaningful,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cInstead of just practicing and taking the weekend off, we were able to focus and channel our energies towards Mercyhurst. Then playing the game, that really helped, when you\u2019re not playing you forget how hard you need to compete just to be successful at this level.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds simple, but simply playing in a game against another team \u2013 as opposed to hitting one another in practice \u2013 does wonders for a team in the middle of its season. And Daniels said he prefers the Bulldogs to keep at it if at all possible this early in the season and have more breaks later.<\/p>\n

But Ferris\u2019 schedule is a bit strange this season.<\/p>\n

Because the Bulldogs (3-5-2, 1-2-1 CCHA) are participating in the Great Lakes Invitational right after Christmas, that forced some other series to be moved around at the 11th hour. It\u2019s why they played Michigan Tech in a single nonconference game at the beginning of October. It\u2019s also why they\u2019ve already had two off weekends and will have another over Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the complete opposite of what I would have liked, and it\u2019s no one\u2019s fault\u2026 maybe a little bit my own,\u201d he said, adding that after the GLI they have another off week, followed by nine straight weeks until the end of the season in January and February. \u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to be in the GLI, and we wanted to be in it so bad, so we had to maneuver our schedule to make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consequently, the Bulldogs\u2019 first two months have been something of a mixed bag. Daniels said he likes how his team\u2019s goaltending tandem of Logan Stein and Noah Giesbrecht has played, but thinks the Bulldogs\u2019 even-strength, five-on-five play has been poor. The Bulldogs have scored 11 of their 24 goals on special teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur power play and penalty kill are going along at a pretty good clip, but I\u2019m really concerned about our ability to generate offense five on five,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re just not generating enough chances. Part of the issue I think is, in the offensive zone, our forecheck hasn\u2019t been as good as I\u2019d like it to be. We seem to play a lot on our end of the rink, and I\u2019d like to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the victory over Mercyhurst can be considered a \u201csandbox\u201d in that regard. All five of Ferris\u2019 goals against the Lakers were at even-strength.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good for us to score those five-on-five goals, and a lot of them we got in those greasy areas, got some greasy goals, so that\u2019s a positive for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There have been some other bright sports offensively. Freshman Connor McGrath leads the team with four goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a talent. He\u2019s been seeing a lot of ice and a lot of valuable minutes. He\u2019s been a real positive addition,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cBut for the most part, our scoring has been pretty spread out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three other players (sophomore scoring leader Bradley Marek, junior Stepan Pokorny and senior Jason Brancheau) have scored three goals apiece, while nine additional players have scored at least once.<\/p>\n

One thing that has slightly made up for the lack of scoring is defense.<\/p>\n

In addition to Stein and Giesbrecht\u2019s play, the Bulldog defensive corps have generally done a good job keeping the puck out of the net. Ferris doesn\u2019t have the ability at the moment to outgun opponents, but if they can keep them to two or fewer goals, they have a good chance at winning.<\/p>\n

In their series against St. Thomas at the end of October the Bulldogs eked out a 3-2 overtime victory, but the Tommies scored five goals the next night and won 5-2. Aside from the OT winner, all four of FSU\u2019s goals in that series were shorthanded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been pretty stingy defensively, and when we\u2019ve made mistakes, our goaltenders have been there to mop it up,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cI think with the exception of the St. Thomas series we\u2019ve done a pretty good job of staying out of the box and remaining disciplined\u2026 from a defensive standpoint, I\u2019ve been really happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice, because, for the most part, I can at least boil the issue down to five-on-five offense. We\u2019re playing well on defense and special teams. We can figure this out, it\u2019s just going to take a little hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs return to action this weekend against Bowling Green before taking another weekend off for Thanksgiving. They then have three more weekends of conference play before the GLI Dec. 27-28 in Grand Rapids, Mich.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at that point of the season where we\u2019re still trying to figure out, do we have a good team? Is that team struggling? It\u2019s really hard until you get maybe through the first half and then it really starts to separate,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the NCAA finally started letting Division I teams play against one another for in-season exhibition games last season, it was a big relief to coaches across the country. Now, no longer at the whims of whatever Canadian team was able to cross the border during the first few weeks of the season, coaches have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":137067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[854],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis Week in CCHA Hockey: In face of schedule tweaks, Ferris State staying competitive with balance, depth across board - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When the NCAA finally started letting Division I teams play against one another for in-season exhibition games last season, it was a big relief to coaches\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137066\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Week in CCHA Hockey: In face of schedule tweaks, Ferris State staying competitive with balance, depth across board - 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