2016-17 Tufts Jumbos Men's Hockey Year in Review

It's getting close to season time, so let's get rolling with finishing up these last six seasons in review. Next up is sixth place Tufts.

6. Tufts Jumbos

Sean Kavanagh, seen here in his freshman year
 became the first Jumbos play to notch 100
games played in his career 

2016-17 Record
9-8-1 (6th in NESCAC)
11-11-3 Overall


Stats:
Overall (Conf. Rank)                                     Conference Games (Conf. Ranks)
Offense - 2.36 G/GM (8th)                                                         Offense - 2.39 G/GM (8th)
Defense - 2.40 G/GM (4th)                                                         Defense - 2.44 G/GM (5th)
Power Play - 18/100 18% (6th)                                              Power Play - 13/73 17.8% (4th)
Penalty Kill - 77/89 86.5% (5th)                                             Penalty Kill - 57/67 85.1% (5th) 
Penalty Minutes - 8.8 /Gm (8th)                                               Penalty Minutes - 8.6 /Gm (9th) 


Season Review
After two straight years of making it to the NESCAC semis as an upstart eighth seed, the Tufts Jumbos looked to add regular season success to the agenda in the 2017-18 campaign. Senior Pat Lackey captured this  optimism in his sixteen part documentary released after the season. It's well worth a view and can be found here.

The confident attitude led to an auspicious start with a 3-1 win over nationally ranked and defending NESCAC champion Trinity in the opener. The Jumbos swept the weekend with a win over Wesleyan and continued the hot start with two non-conference wins over the less than killer Bs of Becker and Brockport before losing to Western New England in the final of the Rutland Herald Invitational they had won just a year prior.

Tufts proved to be a competitive team in the NESCAC throughout but they never caught the momentum that would have led to their second home NESCAC playoff game in team history. After the 4-0 start they never won back-to-back games again until a three game win streak in February that included a home-and-home sweep of their lowly travel partners, Conn College.

The whole year felt like a one step forward, one step back routine. Second year coach Pat Norton's squad had the big win over Trinity in the opener, but loss to the Bantams 7-1 when they met again in Hartford. Tufts handed then sixth ranked Hamilton their first loss the season in January but followed it up with a four game losing streak. An 0-4 mark in one goal games didn't help, either.

And then, of course, are the injuries every team gets saddled with over the course of a hockey season. Junior Chad Goldberg, expected to be a large part of the Jumbos offense, missed the entire season due to concussions. The Jumbos had a stellar goaltending duo of Mason Pulde and Nik Nugnes, but the senior and junior, respectively, both had hips that were more Golden Girls than Golden Knights. Pulde went down for the count with an ACL tear in late January, but Pulde soldiered on to a Second Team All-NESCAC spot.

Like their powder blue brethren in Columbia Football, the Jumbos can't sell the prestige of the program (cough, municipal rink, cough) but they can sell a future. Eight freshman from Norton's first recruiting class saw significant playing time, including talented blueliner Jordan Haney and first line forwards Anthony Farinacci and Tyler Scroggins. All three logged double digit scoring seasons with Haney at 11 (4-7-11) and Scroggins (5-9-14) and Farinacci (7-8-15) trailing only their linemate Brian Brown (9-11-20) in points.

In the end, the Jumbos  ended up in sixth place and earned a trip to the familiar confines of Williams Rink in the Koeppel Center, where the Jumbos had nearly ended the Bantams season two years prior (Trinity received an at-large big to the NCAA tournament and went on to win the whole shebang) and Trinity had ended the Jumbos season in the 2016 NESCAC semis.

The Bantams nearly doubled up the Jumbos in shots 50-26 en route to a 4-1 victory to deny the Jumbos a third straight trip to championship weekend.

High Point
The Jumbos headed into Sage Rink on January 14th winless in the year of our lord 2017 after a tough 4-1 loss at Amherst the night prior. To make matters worse, their opponent, the Continentals of Hamilton, had yet to lose a game not just in 2017, but the entire season and entered at a vaunted 11-0-2. Pulde put up his last great collegiate goaltending performance, backstopping the Jumbos to 39 saves  and a  3-1 win. The victory put the Jumbos at 5-2-1 in conference play and right in the thick of it near the top of the league. Sure, they lost the next four contests, but let's not ruin this beautiful hockey moment in time for the lacrosse school.

Low Point 
Perhaps it is cheap to choose the last game of the season as the low point, as every team's year will end in heartbreak, save the national champion (what up, Norwich?). But for a team with expectations to finally take it to another level after two straight years as the eight seed cinderellas, getting knocked out in the Quarters was a gut punch.

MVP
Nik Nugnes (G, '18) - When Pulde went out for the season, Nugnes stepped up for a 4-2-0 record down the stretch in the regular season, including two shutouts in February. The playoff loss wasn't his fault, either, with 46 saves on the former Main Black Bear's stat line for the day. The junior transfer ended up with a 1.82 Goals Against Average and .941 save percentage in conference games good enough for a Second Team All-NESCAC selection.

https://twitter.com/TuftsMensHockey/status/836714478116950017

Neither of the Jumbos goalies were 1,500 pounds like the goalie of this song from The Zambonis/Atom and His Package, but it's a fun song, so just deal.