After a 5-0 start to its 2011 season, the Park City High School boys’ hockey team has encountered its first genuine stretch of adversity.
The Miners have now lost two games in a row, losing 3-2 to the Uintah Utes last Friday in West Valley and 7-5 Wednesday night at home to the Utah County Independent South Lone Wolves.
First year head coach Aaron Dufford said his team still has a crucial lesson to learn.
“We need to learn how to finish games and how to finish teams off when we have them against the wall,” he said. “We need to put them through the wall.”
Dufford said he knows he has a young team, and that just like with any group of young players there will be some growing pains throughout the course of a season.
“A lot of it is a mindset,” he said. “That mindset is to be a winner, individually and as a team, to have confidence in yourself, to never take the foot off the gas. You can never be satisfied with where you’re at in this sport.
“You have to play an entire game. Even if you let off the gas for five minutes, five minutes can be the difference.”
In Wednesday’s loss, Dufford said his team battled. The Miners went down 5-2 but rallied to knot things up at 5-5 with three minutes left in the third period. However, with a little more than a minute to go, the Lone Wolves regained the lead and added a late empty-net goal.
Freshman forward Nicky Garland, who had the first goal against Uintah last week, netted two goals against the Lone Wolves. Will Radovan, Noah Pranschke and August Masquelier rounded out the goal scoring for Park City Wednesday night, while sophomore TJ Mayo had two assists.
But Dufford said he’d like to see his team learn how to comfortably play with a lead, rather than being forced to muster enough energy to fight back from being down.
“There’s momentum swings in any sport,” he said. “When you gain momentum, when momentum transfers from one side to the other side, it’s the team that continues to pounce that comes out on top.
“We’ve got a young team, but we have a really good team. We need to find that mental aspect that propels us to win tough games.”
In last Friday’s loss to perennial powerhouse Uintah, Park City held an early 2-0 lead before allowing three third-period goals to the Utes.
Asked what he’d do to address his team’s mini funk, Dufford took a deep breath.
“That’s what I’m thinking about right now, what to do,” he said. “In hockey, we’re always told it’s 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical.”
While Park City has given up nine goals in its last two games, Dufford said goalie Brent O’Connell has been a bright spot for the Miners this season but the team must be able to help its goalie on the other side of the ice.
“He has always put us in a position to win throughout the year,” Dufford said. “He’s been a big backbone of our team and bailed us out when we make mistakes. We need to feed off the energy he gives to us.”
Park City doesn’t have to go back to the drawing board quite yet, Dufford said, and his Miners will have the right environment to respond to the adversity with three consecutive home games upcoming. The next game is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 23, against the Brighton Bengals at the Park City Ice Arena.
“Every team we play, we have to go in with the mindset that that’s the best team in the league,” Dufford said.