Christmas offers Ravens welcome break in season

Time off will help young team recharge and reassess

Take away a three-game slide in the early part of November and the first half of the Ontario University Athletics’ season for the Carleton Ravens was a success.

Add those three losses in however, and the Ravens fall right into the lap of mediocrity, a place they really have no place being even if they are a young squad.

“We expected a few bumps on the road because most nights we’re icing eight first-year guys and some nights we’re dressing nine or 10,” Ravens coach Marty Johnston said. “For the most part the guys have worked hard and on some nights the result should have been better.”

Much more was expected of this year’s edition of the Ravens and the five wins in six games they produced just ahead of their mini slide and three straight wins immediately after shows what their capabilities are.

The Ravens closed out the first half of the OUA schedule having won five of their past 10 games, heading into the Christmas season fifth in the OUA East with a 9-5-1 record, six points back of the first-place Queens Golden Gaels.

Following a 7-0 road win over the Laurier Golden Hawks Friday, the Ravens dropped a 6-2 decision at Waterloo to the Warriors Saturday night.

Despite that loss, Johnston thinks his team is on the right path.

“The guys are starting to play our way, which is good, and we’re real happy with the way things are going with the exception of the last game against Waterloo. The guys are starting to understand their roles and we know where we need to go,” Johnston said.

The break may be the best thing right now for the Ravens. They will need an unbelievable second half to equal the 19-7-2 record of last season, but the experience their young players gained in the first half the season may be exactly what they need.

“We lost a lot of guys from last year and we’ve got some new guys coming in, so it has taken some time for us to jell,” veteran Jeff Hayes said. “We hit a bit of a rough patch but we seem to be getting better every day. We got away from our game a little bit and even though we were outshooting our opponents, we weren’t getting the breaks.”

During their three straight losses, the Ravens outshot Brock 40-18, Toronto 38-19 and Ryerson 40-29, so the effort was there, but the goals were not.

“I think the break will be nice, and we can address some of the things we’ve been struggling with and hopefully get better at,” said Hayes, who leads the team in scoring with five goals and 17 points in 15 games.

The Ravens have 13 games remaining in the regular season and five of those are against teams ahead of them in the OUA East Division standings.

“We felt last year we benefitted from the break. Hopefully now that the first semester is over we can build off it,” Johnston said.