Men miss NCAAs for second straight year

The Middlebury men’s hockey team saw its season come to an end this weekend, as they beat Williams 4-1 on Friday, March 6 but fell to Amherst in the NESCAC championship game the following day by a score of 5-2. Amherst received the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA championships, while Middlebury failed to receive an at-large bid for the second year in a row. The Panthers end their season with a record of 19-7-1.

Middlebury advanced to the title game for the 10th straight year by jumping out to an early lead on Friday, going up 1-0 after the first period. A lackluster second period, however, threatened to let the Ephs back into the game. While Williams only pushed across one goal in the frame, the Panthers were lucky not to find themselves down going into the third. For this they can thank goaltender Doug Raeder ’09.

“[Williams] totally dominated us in the second period,” said coach Bill Beaney, “and if it wasn’t for Doug we would have been down by three or four goals.”

Middlebury made the most of its second life, scoring three third period goals to create the final margin. Waiting for the Panthers in the title game on Saturday were the Amherst Lord Jeffs, 3-0 victors over the defending NESCAC champion Trinity in their semifinal. Right from the start the Lord Jeffs controlled the pace of play, grabbing an early lead they would never relinquish.

“The better team won,” said Beaney. “They were much more solid across the board, they won all the little battles and, quite honestly, from player 1 to player 18 they are a better team than we are.”

While the loss marked the second time in as many years the Panthers have failed to win the NESCAC and qualify for the NCAA tournament, Coach Beaney thinks that apart from Amherst, the quality of play in the conference has actually gone down over the last couple of years.

“I don’t think there are as many top end players,” he says, “and that can be attributed to a lot of things. The last few years there has been such a push for admission to NESCAC schools that the academic requirements have risen to the point where a lot of the NESCAC-caliber athletes haven’t been able to get in.”

According to Beaney, it is the ability to work within this framework that has allowed Amherst to cultivate success over the last couple of years.

“I give them credit,” he said. “They have done a great job recruiting in western Canada, as well as developing the guys they have … the game they played against us was the best game they’ve played all year. If they play that well they can win the national championship.”

Over the course of the season the Panthers at times seemed like a team ready to compete on the national level, but they were constantly plagued by inconsistency. Despite dominating play for large stretches of time, they would take whole periods off, losing loose pucks, not moving their feet and falling victim to the mental lapses that had never reared their ugly head during past Panther seasons.

The loss was especially difficult on the seniors, a group that experienced the high of a national championship its freshman year, and the lows of two consecutive exits from the NESCAC tournament during its final two campaigns.

In particular, the story of Raeder stands out against the backdrop of his class’s four-year career. During his first year he backstopped the Panthers to the NCAA championship, playing lights-out in the Final Four, with Sports Illustrated honoring his performance with a spot in their “Faces in the Crowd” feature.

Over the next two years he split time with Ross Cherry ’08, but expected to take over the reins full-time this season. His early struggles, however, opened the door for John Yanchek ’12 to earn the full-time starting job between the pipes. Despite this, Raeder remained a positive force on the ice and in the locker room, eventually earning the nod for the playoffs.

“One of the highlights of this year’s team was the way Doug reacted to the adversity of not being the consistent starter,” said Beaney. “To see how he handled it in such a mature way was impressive, and when it came his time he played very, very well down the stretch.”

Despite the disappointment of ending the year with a loss, the Panthers look to grow from this experience and come back next season a better team than they were down the homestretch this season.

“I think that potentially we have seven or eight players we can build a foundation off of,” says Beaney, “but those people are going to need to emerge as leaders. When we were having successes we didn’t necessarily have the best players, but we always had the best teammates.”