Some times it’s good to lose. Not that any athlete, coach, or fan wants it to happen, but for a team building a foundation like Penn State men’s hockey, knowing what you need to improve on is important. Winning every game would be nice, but if it happened that probably would mean the Nittany Lions weren’t challenging themselves.
Penn State ended last weekend’s series against Air Force having lost both games. And while the team was disappointed, head coach Guy Gadowksy knows there is plenty to take from the trip to Colorado Springs.
“You can’t jump on everything. We did a much better job Saturday, but we’re still taking penalties, bad technique penalties, and I’m not so sure if it’s a lack of commitment, but it certainly it is bad technique,” Gadowsky said Tuesday. “The second issue is that we gave up 12 odd-man rushes on the weekend, which is way, way, way too many.
“There’s a number of reasons why, so we have been and will continue to work on those all week. Those are two pretty big building blocks of the foundation, and it’s not really smart to start working on other things before you have those commitments down.”
The next chance to fix these problems will come Friday and Saturday night. Penn State will return to the Pegula Ice Arena Friday, Oct. 25 to take on RIT for a 7 p.m. faceoff in front of a sell-out crowd. Following Friday night’s game, the Nittany Lions will travel to Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center to play Vermont in the second annual Philadelphia College Hockey Faceoff Saturday (Oct. 26). Penn State beat both teams last season in similar early season meetings.
For Gadowksy to be happy after this weekend, he’s hoping to see some things on the ice even if it doesn’t equal wins. He’ll be looking for some basic adjustments.
“One is a consistent work ethic,” Gadowsky said. “I thought there were aspects of Friday and Saturday that we played very, very well, and certainly to see that same commitment consistently would be something I would say I’ very happy with. The statistic results of that are that odd man rushes are much different.
“We are going to get penalties by how we play with going hard to net and defending hard, but certainly not with bad technique or retaliation penalties. That would make me happy.”
