The start of the season has not been kind to the Oregon hockey team, which currently sits at 7-8 and has dropped five of its last six games. The Ducks return to the ice on Friday as they look to leave behind a rough month of November that saw only two Oregon victories.@@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/@@ @@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=6@@
“We knew coming into November it was going to be a tough month,” said junior defenseman and club coordinator Matt Hanlon.@@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=428@@
All eight of the Ducks losses have come to teams ranked in the top 15 of the American Collegiate Hockey Association’s western region and the Ducks believe that high level competition will help them down the road.@@http://achahockey.org/page.php?page_id=3117&league_id=1061@@
“The fact that we played so many tough teams is going to help us down the stretch,” Hanlon said.
Oregon welcomes the California Golden Bears to the Lane County Ice Center this Friday and Saturday for its last two games of 2011.
The Ducks will look to exploit the Bears’ transition game and create scoring from neutral-zone turnovers to remedy an offense that has had some trouble scoring this year.
“We’ve just got to play some offense,” senior captain Dougo Reese said.@@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=406@@
Although the Bears certainly don’t pose as much of a challenge as some of the other teams the Ducks have played this season, Oregon isn’t treating Cal as a weaker opponent.
“We need to focus on things that we know we need to do right,” Hanlon said.
Hanlon will miss the Ducks’ next two games with a sprained ankle injured in the first game in the Beehive Classic in Utah. Also sidelined for the Ducks is Ian Law, who is still recovering from a concussion suffered earlier in the year.@@http://www.usustatesman.com/aggie-hockey-dominates-beehive-classic-1.2674824#.TtbysUpqMnU@@ @@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=458@@
Connor McBride will return to the Ducks lineup Friday night after recovering from a concussion.@@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=455@@
Earlier in the season the Ducks were hurt tremendously by a lack of discipline, but the team has stopped taking dumb penalties, Hanlon says. Head coach Rich Salahor made the Ducks skate an extra suicide at the end of every practice for every bad penalty they took, but Hanlon said the losses were a better teaching tool than extra skating.@@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=15@@
“I don’t know if that’s as effective as people realizing we’re losing games because we’re taking penalties,” he said.
Although the Ducks are playing with better discipline, the less-experienced members of the Ducks team are also starting to adjust to the pace of play of college hockey.
“It’s always a bit of a learning curve,” Hanlon said. “It’s faster hockey — it’s different hockey.”
After the series with Cal, the Ducks will have a long layoff before returning to the ice January 20 in Seattle. The Ducks believe that if they can avoid the penalty troubles that plagued them in their early games against Washington, they can have success against the Huskies.@@http://www.oregonduckshockey.com/?page_id=6@@
The long hiatus poses some problems for the team, but Hanlon says it’s just a matter of keeping the team honest.
“The key is making sure that everybody is skating over the break,” he said.