When your coach uses words like “embarrassed” and openly questions the character and commitment of your team, you have a problem. And so it is for Denver, which likely is headed for its lowest ranking of the season (4 or lower) after an uninspiring split with a Dartmouth College team that entered the weekend with two wins.

Friday’s 1-0 Pioneers victory had plenty to like, starting with a strong commitment to defense, very good puck pressure and a shutout by senior Tanner Jaillet.

Saturday, DU got the one thing it didn’t have Friday – a strong start. But things imploded for the Pioneers after they built a 3-0, first-period lead, and the result was a shocking 5-4 loss.

Here is the good, the bad and the ugly from DU’s final series of the first half.

Shot charts

The Pioneers dominated in this statistic all weekend – total shots attempted. They had a 68-45 edge in that department Saturday and a 65-41 edge on Friday. They also enjoyed healthy margins in shots that landed on goal (42-28 and 32-23 the night before).

With a clear skill advantage, why aren’t they finishing more?

If anything, DU often seems to try to make that extra pass or wait for a wider opening before shooting. That extra split second gives goalies and defenders time to reset and get square to the play. Against Dartmouth, the Pioneers had 33 shots blocked in two games, or in other terms nearly 25 percent of their shot attempts hit a defender’s pad, skate or stick.

The other part of this is having traffic in front of the net or players in position to deposit rebounds into the net, and there were plenty of those opportunities this weekend.

Details, details, details

A couple of players I spoke with said a lack of attention to details is continuously hurting the Pioneers. It shows up most obviously at crunch time.

Among other things, some of this is positioning, some of it is knowing the situation and making the appropriate play, some of it is knowing who you’re on the ice with.

There also appears to be a mental component in play. The Pioneers seem less confident in situations when the other team begins to rally.

How is this fixed? That is the $64,000 question. And again, if you listened to coach Jim Montgomery‘s comments after Saturday’s game, it’s clear he and his staff are frustrated by the team’s brain cramps.

Vanishing act

Another of Montgomery’s post-game comments Saturday was telling – the one about playing a veteran line with the score was 3-1 and promptly seeing the lead cut in half. The coach expected leadership from the group of Henrik Borgstrom, Jarid Lukosevicius and Troy Terry. Instead, he got a combined minus-6.

His other veteran line – Dylan Gambrell, Colin Staub and Logan O’Connor was a combined minus-5. This line had been very good over the past three weeks, and all three have contributed in multiple ways so this likely was an aberration.

But the top group, which features three of the team’s top five scorers, has gone MIA on offense of late. Terry’s power-play goal Saturday was his first point in six games, Borgstrom’s assist was his second point in that span, and Lukosevicius has one point (a goal) in seven games. They get plenty of minutes and all play on the top power-play unit.

After the performances of freshmen Jaakko Heikkinen and Kohen Olischefski (three points apiece over the weekend), one has to wonder if they’re in line for increased roles. Both already are part of an effective second power-play unit that scored in both games.

Perfect practice makes perfect

Going into the weekend, Montgomery wasn’t pleased with his team’s week of practice. Were the Pioneers focused on the holiday break? Did they take their opponent lightly? Who knows. But DU didn’t have a great week of preparation, and it showed up at the worst possible times on Saturday.

Expectations are high at Denver. The defending national champions returned a trio of key players were thought to be considering early exits to the pros – Borgstrom, Gambrell and Terry. The planets seemingly had aligned for another run for a national title, and that could well happen.

The DU staff is masterful at evaluation and adjustment, and given two weeks to do just that, I’d be willing to bet some of the details will be corrected before Merrimack and Air Force, another team coming off a somewhat disappointing first half, come calling.

Follow @MagnessMayhem on Twitter and like us on Facebook for Denver hockey updates.

Copyright First Line Editorial 2017