The Yellowstone Quake Hockey team has concluded the first half of their 2020-2021 campaign. The Quake were able to manage their way through a COVID filled first half of the season and played 18 of their originally scheduled 21 contests. Three games were canceled due to COVID. In those 18 games the Quake would go 5-13 and sit at 7th in the Frontier Division at the halfway point. Head Coach Phil Oberlin with his thoughts on the season’s first half.
“Obviously the expectations coming into this year were pretty high. So I don’t know that we lived up to what we had expected. Gave up more goals than we had wanted to, throughout the first half. I think penalties were an issue as well but we’re still in the thick of things, we still have over half the season left to play and again, we’re not out of it by any means. We did some really good things, especially the last month.”
Taking a more in depth look at that 5-13 record. Defensively, they have given up 118 goals this season (6.5 Goals Against Per Contest) which is 7th in the Division. However, in their last outing vs. Gillette they might’ve found a spark
“Matt Schoer, one of the goaltenders that’s out to kind of see what the program’s like and everything, he got an opportunity to play on Friday and played very well. You know even just a little bit of a difference in the line-up like that can spark a team to kind of play a little bit harder. It might’ve been that they didn’t know what he was going to look like in that either but he played well. Yeah, we’re just trying to kind of stay positive moving into the second half.”
The Quake have scored 56 goals on the season, 3.1 Goals Per Game, which puts them at 6th in the Division and their point differential stands at -62. Coach on the offensive side of the ice.
“Trying to get all five guys involved in our offense. We’re trying to create much more offensive defense-men than we’ve ever had before because I think we have the ability to do that. It just takes a little bit of time for them to get adjusted to that style of play and kind of being that aggressive from the back end up. We’ll be a little bit more prepared for everybody the second half because it’ll give us a little bit more time during the break to prepare ourselves.”
Just 3-7 in their last 10 games, the Quake have shown flashes this year of being great it’s the consistency on a nightly basis that is still a question mark.
“I don’t think that there’s anything that needs to be drastically changed in what we’re doing, it just needs to be, again done on a more consistent basis. We’ve seen them be able to execute for periods at a time, you know playing great on the offensive end, again just this last Friday, playing great on the defensive end. Just putting it all together, the full game: defensive zone, neutral zone, offensive zone, special teams. I just don’t know that we’ve had a full game that we’ve consistently played in all aspects of the game well enough to start consistently winning.”
Due to the COVID pandemic their will be no showcase tournament this season. The Quake will return to action for the second half of the season on New Years Eve. The Quake will play host to Sheridan that night before hosting Bozeman on New Years Day. The following day the Quake will be on the road to face Bozeman. All those game will get underway at 7:30pm.
