Embarassed.  Pathetic. Selfish.  Not prepared to play.  Disappointed beyond measure.  All ways that Coach Cahoon described his team’s performance after they were beat 5-2 (FIVE – TWO) by Army.  I have to agree with him.  This had to be one of the more horrid performances I’ve seen from a UMass team in some time.  Think last year’s loss to Bentley was bad?  No way, at least that one was close. Losing to Holy Cross a few years ago?  Not nearly as bad.  One friend talked about the loss to Alabama-Huntsville out in Minnesota.  This is easily one of the worst UMass losses in the last ten years.  Easily.

And frankly, it all came down to effort.  Effort in the corners.  Effort in clearing the puck out from the front of the net.  Effort in making sure you’re in the right place on defense.  Effort in moving your skates and stick and not taking stupid penalties.  I was amazed at the complete inability to either clear the puck from in front of the net or get it out of the zone.  T.J. Syner admitted that his team was “outbattled”.  Yep.  Completely right.  From the opening drop of the puck Army wanted this game more and not only did they get a win, they got a dominant win.  Army was averaging 1.80 goals per game on the season coming in.  They scored FIVE.  The defense was horrid.  There is absolutely nothing positive I can say about the defensive effort.  It was all bad.  I guess maybe the lone exception is the play of Jeff Teglia who came in for Paul Dainton in the third and played well, giving up a lone goal that came on an Army breakaway.  I’m not exactly sure how you give up a power play breakaway, but UMass found a way.

Believe it or not, the offense wasn’t half bad at times.  But they need to get better shots off.  UMass attempted 66 total shots.  19 were blocked, 15 were off target.  That’s more than half of the shots right there that never get to Ryan Leets, the Army goaltender that dazzled in his college debut.  Seriously, his college debut.  But overall I can’t complain about the offense other than they just seem to be one second behind everything.  A step behind on passes.  Just late on putting home rebounds.  One timers going off the heels of the stick.  You would hope, please, that as the season goes along and the team plays more together that they can close the small gaps in timing that’s preventing them from putting the puck home.

Today’s game against Sweden should be interesting.  Matt Vautour of the Gazette asked Cahoon after the game if last night’s performance would cause him to play people that he originally didn’t plan to.  Cahoon said the opposite, he’s still planning on keeping key guys out (specifically mentioning Syner and Marcou) and he’s going to allow guys to play who haven’t seen a lot of action this season to basically try out for playing time. He said whoever does well will find themselves dressed because there were a lot of no-shows last night.

Sounds good to me.  After all, what’s the worst that can happen?  This team just got dominated at home by a lower tier Atlantic Hockey team.

Fear The Triangle Player of the Game – Mike Pereira
There were a few bright spots in this one believe it or not.  Pereira was probably the brightest, scoring again and ending the night with a +2.  At times I felt Syner, Troy Power, Brian Keane, and Kevin Czepiel all looked good.

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Dick Baker calls the game a “horror show”.   Accurate.  And here’s his post game analysis.

Matt Vautour notes that the team has fallen behind 2-0 in five of the team’s seven games.