2015-16 Tufts Men's Hockey Season in Review

As we enter the 2015-16 academic calendar and the fall athletic season, we are reviewing the 2015-16 campaigns for each of the NESCAC men's hockey teams from #10 to #1.  Next up is eight place Tufts (actually tied with Colby for seventh but Mules won tie breaker for playoff seeding)
8. Tufts Jumbos

Senior Stewart Bell (#18) had fourteen points (7-7-14)
but the rest of the Jumbo senior class only contributed five goals

2015-16 Reccord
5-8-5 (tied for 7th in NESCAC)
10-10-6 Overall


Stats:
Overall (Conf. Rank)                                     Conference Games (Conf. Ranks)
Offense - 2.73 G/GM (5th)                                                         Offense - 2.39 G/GM (6th)
Defense - 2.31 G/GM (4th)                                                         Defense - 2.33 G/GM (6th)
Power Play - 12/79 15.2% (10th)                                              Power Play - 10/54 18.5% (2nd)
Penalty Kill - 100/118 84.7% (5th)                                             Penalty Kill - 76/90 84.4% (5th) 
Penalty Minutes - 13.4 /Gm (1st)                                               Penalty Minutes - 15.2 /Gm (1st) 


Season Review
The Jumbos entered the 2015-16 season with a new coach for the first time since 1998. Longtime Tufts benchboss Brian Murphy left the largest NESCAC school after the Jumbos first NESCAC playoff win in an improbably 8/1 upset of eventual 2015 NCAA D-III men's hockey champion Trinity.

In Murphy's place stepped Pat Norton, longtime D-I/D-III assistant and head prep school coach. Norton lead the Jumbos to their first .500 + season since 2011-12, including out of conference success with a Rutland Herald Invitational title and conference success with the Jumbos second consecutive 8/1 upset in the NESCAC Quartefinals, this time against Williams. Trinity would get their revenge from 2015 in the conference semis, ending the Jumbos season with a 5-3 victory.

The Jumbos were highly penalized all-season and not coincidentally were often outshot in games. They were kept in contests by a pair of transfer goaltenders: Mason Pulde (Middlebury transfer, his second season with Tufts) and Nik Nugnes (Maine). Pulde saw the bulk of the action and posted a .946 save percentage in conference games (2nd only to Williams freshman phenom Michale Pinios), followed closely by Nugnes .943 save percentage. On the other end of the ice, only 12 of their 68 goals were scored by seniors with no player reaching double digits.

High Point
As with 2015, you can't beat the 8/1 seed upset in the NESCAC Quartefinals for a high point of the season. Pulde once again proved to be the diferrence, stopping 36 saves - including 17 in the third - to earn the Jumbos their second straight trip to championship weekend with a 2-1 victory over Williams.

Low Point 
The Jumbos had a consistently mediocre season, never winning more than three straight (all out of conference) and never losing more than two straight. They never had a four point NESCAC weekend, but they also only had one weekend in which they failed to come away with at least one point. In the first weekend of December, Williams blanked them 2-0 at Malden Valley Forum while the next night visiting Middlebury edged the Jumbos 3-2.

MVP
Mason Pulde (G, '17)   Perhaps it was the competition with Nugnes, but Pulde took a leap forward upping his overall save percentage by over .030 points and bringing his Goals Against Average down almost a full goal form his sophomore campaign.The Economics major was also an MVP in the classroom earning D-III Academic All-America honors (2nd team), an accomplishment only two NESCAC student-athletes of any gender or any sport earned in 2015-16. 

Tufts' Pulde and Williams' Tamposi named Academic All-Americans - Congratulations! https://t.co/usaDyN2MEz pic.twitter.com/DffxiAsad7

— NESCAC (@NESCAC) June 9, 2016