Yale enthusiastic but inexperienced
Even where the Yale men’s hockey roster features a familiar name, there are not always a lot of NCAA games behind it.
With help, or rather with no help, from the Ivy League’s skipping athletics last school year after the COVID-19 pandemic ended the 2019-20 season in the playoffs, only nine Bulldogs have played a college hockey game.
That includes transfer Ryan Carmichael of Greenwich, who played eight games for Notre Dame two seasons ago. The other eight have a combined 225 games in blue and white. And while coach Keith Allain is excited for a new start, he knows he and his staff will have to be patient.
“The one side of that is our guys had a year of hockey taken away from them, so the the energy and the excitement, you can feel it in the air every time they come on the ice,” Allain said Monday on the ECAC’s preseason media conference call.
“They saw two senior classes here at Yale not have an opportunity to finish their season, one not have one at all and the other one have it taken away from them. I think there’s a renewed appreciation for every time they get to put on that Yale sweater and go out on the ice.”
They have a while longer to wait. The Ivies’ late start means that while some teams get underway this weekend, the Bulldogs don’t play until Oct. 30 at Brown, with the home opener Nov. 5 against Quinnipiac.
It’ll be 601 days between games, 607 between home games.
“Our job is to is to foster that enthusiasm, temper it