The Colby men’s hockey team started this year with a new coach after long-time head coach Jim Tortorella left to take an assistant coaching job at the University of New Hampshire. Coach Stan Moore takes over the team after spending a year coaching hockey at Kents Hill Academy.

Unfortunately, the Mules have not had the best start, with a 1-3 record (and an additional loss in exhibition play) going into a key home-and-home series against Bowdoin College. What the record doesn’t state is that the team’s total goal differential is only minus-one. All four of the Mules’ losses have come by one goal, and the last goal has been scored in either overtime or the last minute of regulation.

Coach Moore was very pleased by the effort his team showed through the first five games. “We just need to execute better and communicate a bit better,” he said, emphasizing the difficulty of adjusting to a new system. He is hoping the team will begin to get more comfortable in his schemes and start to “execute with reckless abandon.”

Over the Thanksgiving break, the Mules took on the United States Under-18 National Team and Salve Regina University. Against the U.S. U-18 team in an exhibition game, Colby fell behind 3-0 and 5-2 before furiously staging a comeback attempt. Senior Matt Rappaport opened the scoring for Colby at 5:03 of the second period, but the U.S. U-18 team made it 4-1 just over a minute later. Fellow senior Chris Buonomo scored his first goal of the game, shorthanded, just 85 seconds later to make it 4-2, but the U.S. team netted one more goal before the second intermission, and Colby went into the third facing a 5-2 deficit.

Buonomo scored again just under seven minutes into the final frame to cut the lead to two. At 9:47, Ray Zeek ’15, who assisted on Buonomo’s second goal, found the twine to make it a 5-4 game. Colby battled hard for the final 10 minutes but failed to score again, falling to the U.S. team despite an impressive rally. Coach Moore was proud of the heart that his team played with, saying, “I was very pleased with the effort we showed; we did not quit. The third period has been our strongest period this season, and if we can just play consistently during the other two periods hopefully we can get on the other side of these scores.”

In the second game of the weekend, the Mules lost another tough contest to Salve Regina, 3-2, in the Bowdoin Face-off Classic. Colby scored first with 5:24 left in the opening stanza as Zeek sniped a shot into the top left corner off of a nice feed from Buonomo in transition. Salve Regina evened the score before the end of the period and the teams went into the second tied at one. Salve Regina scored again at 9:05 of the second period to take a 2-1 lead. Despite a strong showing in net for Salve Regina, the Mules evened the score on a Scott Harff ’13 top-shelf snipe from the blue line with only 2:29 to go. Harff had been robbed earlier in the period on a great save by the Salve Regina netminder. Salve Regina managed a heartbreaker with 1:14 left to send the Mules home in defeat. Coach Moore pointed to fundamental hockey after the loss: “We played to win; we all agreed to go for it. They ended up with a kid in our zone, one-on-one with space to shoot, and he took it. Too big of a gap for the shooter; we just need to be more responsible.”

Overall Coach Moore has been pleased with junior Matt Delaney’s play in goal in his first season as the starting goalie: “I’m most impressed with what he’s shown so far, and we’ll keep working on improving.” Colby and Bowdoin face off on Friday in the Alfond Rink in what will be by far the biggest game Moore has coached so far for Colby. Coach Moore was aware of the significance of the game: “There’s a lot at stake, not even at a conference level….Hopefully we can add more than one [win].”