Recent struggles have dampened Dal’s first half

The holidays would be a bit merrier for the Dalhousie Tigers if they can close out the Atlantic university hockey season's first half with a victory.

Much of the season thus far has been a lump of coal.

The Tigers are mired in last place in the AUS standings at 3-12-2. Heading into games Friday, Dal trailed sixth-place UPEI — and the final playoff spot — by five points.

The Panthers were at St. Francis Xavier on Friday night while the Tigers were idle.

It's been a rough stretch for Chris Donnelly's Tigers since pulling off a notable 5-3 upset of — at the time — the first-place Acadia Axemen on Nov. 16.

Dal has dropped three straight by a combined score of 25-7, including a 10-0 loss to UNB on Nov. 22, a 7-2 setback to Moncton the following night and an 8-5 decision to the X-Men on Wednesday.

The Tigers can head into Christmas on a high note and make up some ground on the Panthers when they visit UPEI on Saturday, the final evening of regular-season action before the league shuts down for five weeks.

"This final week is very critical," Donnelly said in a recent interview.

"These are teams that are around us in the standings. Any time you have those opportunities in this league, in our conference, you have to play well and get points out of them. Failure to do that leads to missing the playoffs.

"It's been like that every season I've been here. There are games that are critical. UPEI is five points ahead of us so there's no excuse. We have to perform well. And we certainly can't come out like we did against UNB."

Donnelly was perplexed in trying to explain what happened to his team when they visited the the U Sports No. 1 Reds last Friday.

The Tigers trailed 4-0 before the game was 12 minutes old and were outshot 58-11 overall.

"It was a tough weekend," said Donnelly, in his eighth season at Dal.

"Going off a win against Acadia, those weren't the two games we were looking to play, especially against UNB.

"We had been playing some good hockey throughout the first half. We had a lot of onegoal games, a lot of overtime games. And to finally get a win against Acadia, helped get us in the mix again.

"UNB was a rested, healthy team that was ready for us and chomping at the bit. They came out playing hard and our response wasn't good. As the game wore on, I was less thrilled with the response from our players. It was certainly unacceptable from anyone's point of view."

With only three wins over their first 17 games, the Tigers would like to hit the reset button in the second half as they seek just their third post-season berth since 2004.

Perhaps the holiday break comes at an opportune time.

"If you're playing well, you want to keep playing," Donnelly said. "If you're not playing well, you can use the time away to recover and regroup. It all depends what kind of spin you want to put on it."

The Tigers have had trouble scoring (a league-worst 44 goals scored this season) and keeping the puck out of the net (averaging nearly five goals against per game).

"I watch a lot of NFL football and the coaches in that league will talk about more games lost than there are games won," Donnelly said.

"That's kind of where we're at right now. I don't think that we're doing a lot of things to help ourselves become a playoff team. We are finding ways to lose a game and making it easier for our opponents. We have to solve that problem."

Three games are scheduled for Saturday: the Saint Mary's Huskies host UNB, Acadia entertains Moncton and Dal at UPEI.

The league resumes Jan. 2 when the Panthers visit SMU.