Ever wonder what it would feel like to have the rug pulled out from underneath your feet?

Unfortunately for the Air Force hockey team that is exactly what happened in mid-March when Atlantic Hockey and the NCAA pulled the plug on the rest of the 2019-season.

The Falcons were in Rochester, N.Y., preparing to play RIT in an AHA quarterfinal series – and feeling good about their chances – when they received word.

“It was terrible,” coach Frank Serratore said. “We really felt we were on our way. We had won five of our past six, and we were playing at RIT, where we had beaten them seven times in a row (before a Feb. 29 loss). It’s not like we were going to a place where we struggled.

“We were playing our best hockey of the season and our confidence was at a high.”

And bear in mind, the further the Falcons get in an Atlantic Hockey tournament, the more dangerous they are. They’d won seven of the previous 13 and gone to the final four nine times in that span. Their coaching and their style lend themselves well to the postseason.

A season of streaks

The Falcons’ late-season push, capped by a sweep of Mercyhurst in an AHA opening-round series on March 6-7, left them with a 12-18-6 record, the third fewest wins in a season in the 23-year Serratore era at the Academy. Yet, optimism was high.

Air Force had pushed through the adversity of an 0-7 start to pick up a crucial victory at Sacred Heart on Nov. 2. That kicked off a run in which the Falcons were 6-1-3 through Jan. 3. All three ties were followed by picking up an extra AHA point in the second, three-on-three overtime. So of the 30 points on the table, the Falcons claimed 24.

That run was capped with a 4-1 win against AHA regular-season champ AIC on Jan. 3. The next night, the Falcons began a 2-9-2 run that included a shootout loss at Army West Point and a shootout win at Canisius. It also featured the Face-off at Falcon Stadium on Feb. 17, a hard-fought 4-2 loss to Colorado College that the Falcons were in until a last-minute Tigers empty-net goal.

This was a young Falcons team that often played eight or more newcomers, so wild swings weren’t completely unexpected, but this season tested even that idea.

All the pieces working together

If there was a defining trait to this team it might have been this: Some nights the Falcons were outstanding defensively, other nights they were good enough offensively, but rarely did the two combine on the same night.

If Air Force scored three or more goals, it was 9-4-3. If an opponent hit three, the Falcons were just 2-14-3. What’s interesting, however, is when Air Force limited foes to two or fewer goals, its record was 10-5-3. In many years limiting an opponent to two or fewer goals was an automatic win. The Falcons were good in such situations, but it wasn’t automatic.

Offense overview

The word from Day 1 was this team, which lost more than 50 percent of its goal scoring from a reasonably offensively challenged team a year ago, would struggle to score.

Early on it did, netting just eight goals in the first seven games. Yet it did tally three or more goals 16 times, so it’s not as if it couldn’t score.

Last season’s team, which also played a total of 36 games, provides the best comparable. This season, the Falcons scored just six fewer goals (84 vs. 90) than the 2018-19 edition. The goals per game of 2.3 (48th nationally) was down from 2.5. But this has been a four-year trend. In 2016-17, Air Force scored 3.2 gpg and the next year still put in 2.7 gpg. Those two seasons ended in the NCAA Tournament’s elite eight.

The Falcons’s shooting percentage also declined each of the past four years, from 10.5 percent in 2016-17 to 7.7 percent this season. It fell roughly one percentage point each of the four seasons.

If you’re looking for a silver lining on offense, there are two. First, the Falcons generated 30.3 shots per game – their most of the past four years, slightly better than the 2016-17 team.

Second, Air Force had a very balanced lineup (12 double-figure point scorers) and wasn’t overly reliant on any one group. Four of those 12 were defensemen, and Zach Mirageas and freshman Brandon Koch (a third-team all-AHA pick) were second and third respectively with 23 and 19 points.

Defense overview

If you want to pick one team strength, the statistics would tell you it was team defense.

Consider: In spite of the offense’s struggles the goals allowed per game (2.83) was middle of the pack in the NCAA (35th). That was only slightly higher than last season’s 2.6 average. It wasn’t on par with the elite eight seasons (2.2 gapg), but it was solid.

The real impressive number here is the Falcons allowed just 24.7 shots against per game, sixth in the nation, and by far the best of the past four seasons (nearly 2 per game fewer).

The Falcons also were good on face-offs, winning 52.3 percent, despite having graduated two excellent face-off men. Senior Brady Tomlak, who also led the team with 26 points, won more than 60 percent of his draws and over 62 percent of them in AHA play. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he was selected the league’s top defensive forward.

The Falcons knew they had to play it tight and disciplined, and they usually did. That’s very impressive given their young roster, and I think it speaks to the job the coaching staff did as well as the players’ commitment levels.

Goaltending overview

Alex Schilling had never started an NCAA game until Nov. 2 at Sacred Heart. And what a situation to throw the sophomore into. The Falcons were 0-7 and playing a high-powered, emerging team. So of course he stopped 21 shots and staved off a Pioneers comeback in a 4-3 win.

Schilling, who capitalized on what amounted to a redshirt freshman season, started every game after that and ended up with a 12-11-6 record, a 2.39 goals-against average and a .903 save percentage. His goals-against average was just 0.15 higher than Billy Christopoulos‘ was the previous season.

In the process, Schilling stamped himself as the Falcons’ goaltender going forward. He had a knack for making timely saves, too, particularly when facing outnumbered attacks.

Special teams overview

This was a bit of a mystery. The Falcons could not buy a power-play goal early in the season, then had stretches when they were all right with the extra man. Still, their 13 percent conversion rate was seventh-worst in Division I.

What’s odd is Air Force is either sink or swim in this category. Two seasons ago, they connected on only 14 percent (yet reached the elite eight). Last season’s team, which scored just six more total goals, connected on 21 percent of its power plays.

The real surprise here was the penalty kill. As good as the Falcons were at five-on-five, they killed off only 80.7 percent of their penalties and were 38th nationally in that category. Their preview three seasons saw kill rates of 88.9 percent, 84.1 percent and 89.7 percent. That long has been a hallmark of this program.

Throwing everything else out, if Air Force is near its norm in the PK, it probably wins two or three more games.

In summary

Air Force finished in the middle of the AHA pack, which was the expectation. It was a young team, so some inconsistency was expected.

We didn’t know how the goaltending would play out post-Christopoulos, but Schilling turned in a strong performance and offers hope for the future.

The power play was the only thing that separated this team from the previous year’s, so it’s hard to pin a lot of fault on the offense given the weapons it had to replace.

And the team defense also was quite good.

On a team with so little margin for error, stronger special teams probably would have made a substantial difference.

As Serratore often said, this was a spirited, resilient group, and one that could have made a lot of noise in the AHA tournament. From there, who knows?

NEXT: What’s next for the Falcons

©First Line Editorial 2020