The Seventh Period examines a half dozen takeaways from Air Force’s sweep at Holy Cross and looks ahead to a huge home series.

First Period

Air Force has just eight Atlantic Hockey Conference games remaining so it’s not too soon to start looking at the league standings and assess the Falcons’ postseason prospects. Getting swept – albeit on the road – by a team beneath you in the standings doesn’t help. Air Force is in a three-way tie for fourth place, but one of the teams with them – RIT – swept the Falcons at Cadet Arena (the Logan Drackett series) and has two AHC games in hand. Air Force is three points behind third-place Army, and five points ahead of Holy Cross and Bentley. A top-five finish and a first-round AHC playoff bye is desired, and a top-four placing ensures hosting a quarterfinal series.

Second Period

A season-long concern about having enough offense is bearing out again. During Air Force’s 0-7 start it scored a total of eight goals. Next came a season-saving run of 6-1-3 with the one loss in overtime. The Falcons scored 32 goals in that stretch (3.2 per game). As we all know, if Air Force gets three goals it’s almost a certainty it’s going to get points if not win. Since a Jan. 3 victory over AIC, the Falcons have gone 2-4-1 and scored just 14 goals (2 per game). In eight games since the start of 2020, the usually stingy Falcons have given up 23 goals, including five twice.

Third Period

This past weekend, the Falcons mustered just two goals in what were basically two 2-1 losses at Holy Cross. That’s the fewest they’ve scored in a series since the lost at home 2-1 and 1-0 to RIT in a series in which they outshot the Tigers by nearly a 4-to-1 ratio and dominated for long stretches at a time. Arizona State also held them to two goals on the second weekend of the season.

Fourth Period

The games at Holy Cross were very different in feel, however. In the opener, the Crusaders blitzed the Falcons with 23 first-period shots en route to a 42-17 margin. Alex Schilling‘s superlative play gave Air Force a chance, and they were never more than a goal away until Holy Cross got a last-second empty-netter. Saturday’s 2-1 loss was, as coach Frank Serratore described it, a “street fight”, a true 50-50 game. Air Force drew even late in the second period only to see Holy Cross answer right back. One encouraging sign was the Falcons outshot the Crusaders 34-28.

Fifth Period

Beyond Schilling’s play (he made 65 saves on the weekend), freshman defenseman Brandon Koch continues to make an impact on the scoresheet. His fourth goal of the season came on the power play Saturday night, and gave him 11 points. The other goal scorer this weekend, junior wing Max Harper, netted his seventh of the season, tying him with Brady Tomlak for the team lead.

Sixth Period

Tomlak, the Falcons’ leading scorer with a career-high 19 points, missed Friday’s game due to illness and played at less than 100 percent on Saturday. Before this weekend he’d had points in seven games in a row. Junior Marshall Bowery had give goals in his previous four games before the Holy Cross series. Several others have heated up, too, including defenseman Zach Mirageas (17 points), center Kieran Durgan (13 points) and Koch. One thing that would help is getting more players going at the same time. Nearly every regular has had stretches where they’ve played well and gotten points, but rarely have a bunch of them done that at the same time. It can happen – and it needs to; it just hasn’t very often to this point.

Seventh Period

Next up is Sacred Heart, which has gone 12-4-1 since its split against the Falcons in Connecticut in early November. The Pioneers, who defeated No. 17 Quinnipiac on Sunday, are tied for first in Atlantic Hockey with AIC and have been held to fewer than three goals just three times in that 17-game span. And they’ve scored four or more 10 times in that duration. Air Force got drilled, 7-1, in the first game to extend its winless start to seven games. The Falcons bounced back and won 4-3 the next night, a triumph that flipped the script on the season. They will need to show that sort of fortitude again this weekend if they want to stay in striking distance of the top teams in the league.

©First Line Editorial 2020