Colorado College faces win-or-go home series with archrival Denver to salvage season

COLORADO SPRINGS — There are times when a crushing end to one season fuels a team the following year, but the weight of those memories can become an anchor as well.

The latter has been an issue for Colorado College hockey this season, but there’s still time to make good on what was a promising start for a team with real expectations.

“Our goal this year was to not leave any doubt come this time of year, but that’s not the situation we’re in right now,” Tigers senior forward Stanley Cooley said. “We understand that. We know our road to where we want to be, and this weekend is the first step in that.”

The road to the NCAA Tournament leads the sixth-seeded Tigers right back to where they were last weekend, Magness Arena, to face their fiercest rivals, the University of Denver, in a best-of-three series to open NCHC tournament play. They must win twice at Magness against the defending NCAA champions, then twice next weekend at the NCHC Frozen Faceoff to earn the conference’s automatic bid.

Third-seeded Denver defeated CC in three of four regular-season matchups and secured the Gold Pan for the sixth straight year, but all four games were tied or within a goal in the third period.

“If you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best, so no better team to play than DU, and it’s even better that we had just played them this past weekend,” CC junior goalie Kaidan Mberko said. “We’re not preparing for new systems or a new game plan. We just saw them, and obviously we know what they’re going to do. They’re really good at it, obviously, but I think we’re going to be even more prepared.”

The Tigers weren’t supposed to be backed into a win-or-go home situation. A year ago, CC took a huge leap forward as a program, but was the first team left out of the NCAA Tournament.

This season got off to a great start, with eight straight wins. The Tigers climbed as high as No. 8 in the national rankings. They won three of four against Arizona State, which finished second in the NCHC. They won once against conference champ Western Michigan, and took the Broncos to overtime twice.

The ability to play like a tournament team is in there. The results, particularly during a 2-7 slide in January, have not been.

A turning point was the first weekend in January, when Augustana came to Ed Robson Arena and swept the Tigers. It dredged up a painful memory from last season, and led to further stumbles.

“A lot of what happened last year was it was easy to look back and say, ‘Well, if you don’t lose to Augustana, you’re in the NCAA Tournament,’ ” CC coach Kris Mayotte said. “We played Augustana at home (this year) and we played really well. It was like everything that went against us felt like it was hurting our season.

“We felt like our pairwise (rankings) lives were on the line. That was probably my fault in allowing us to feel that way, because that’s a lot of pressure to feel in the middle of a season.”

The consistency needed to earn an NCAA at-large bid hasn’t been there, but CC does have two wins against ranked teams since Feb. 1 and the two close losses to the Pioneers last weekend.

There have been growing pains as the program tries to climb in the NCHC, but this is no longer a group that needs to play a perfect game to just compete with the best teams in the nation.

“Every year, you can have a lot of adversity,” Mberko said. “I think that dip in our season has made us into what we are right now, and gave us a lot of confidence. Obviously, it wasn’t perfect, but to come out on the other side that we believe in our game and our process.

“We have a great opportunity to be able to play a really good team and make a really good run. I think we’re battle tested, for sure.”

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