Kris Mayotte has words of encouragement and optimism for his young team. 

Despite the disappointment of last week’s Gold Pan series, plenty remains on the line for Colorado College hockey (11-13-4, 5-9-4) in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. The Tigers currently sit in seventh place of nine in the conference and eight points behind Minnesota Duluth for the fourth and final home playoff spot. CC can earn a maximum of 18 points from the final three regular-season series of the year. 

This weekend, CC heads north to St. Cloud State. Puck drop at the Huskies’ Herb Brooks National Hockey Center is 6 p.m. on Friday and 5 p.m. on Saturday. 

“The crazy thing about this league is Duluth is two games under .500 and they’re in home ice. That’s the norm. The norm is that you’re around .500, a game or two above it, a game or two below it. The league this year has three teams that have kind of elevated, and everybody else is in that next group, including us,” Mayotte said. “We have nine losses in league play, Duluth has 11. We just have four ties. It’s getting a young team to understand that. It’s getting a young team to keep their belief even though it’s like you win one, you lose one.

“You can’t lose confidence, you can’t think that, ‘Oh man, this season’s a failure.’ It’s still right in front of you, but the time is now.”

CC has 15 new skaters this season, 13 of whom are freshmen. Eight of the team’s routine starters on a given evening are freshmen.

For Mayotte, the key to his young group attaining success is continuing to work on the habits that allow the Tigers to be a tough team to beat, like getting inside the dots and being physical. 

Following a trio of conference weekends that saw CC earn wins over North Dakota, Omaha and Arizona State, the Tigers’ second night against rival Denver last week was a letdown. CC struggled to keep pace with the speedy Pioneers and found little success in the offensive zone as Denver outshot the Tigers 39-18. The shot disparity was an abnormality on the season for the Tigers who have outshot opponents by a 936-803 margin through 28 games. 

“A big part of it is like, ’Hey, what happened? What was our mindset? How did this happen? Are you tired? Was it too hard? Did we not have confidence,’” Mayotte said. “Because it’s going to happen again, you’re going to have a period where the other team feels fast and you don’t feel like you’re connecting. You have to be able to reflect on this moment and in this reflection and say, ‘Okay, we remember this, we know what it was, this is how we fix it.’”

The Tigers might be tested similarly at St. Cloud this weekend. The Huskies are in fifth place, just two points behind the Bulldogs and also itching for a spot among the top four teams in the conference.  

From a personnel standpoint, one area to watch for CC is in goal. Senior captain Kaidan Mbereko has a majority of the starts for the Tigers this season; however freshman Jackson Unger performed well in recent starts against Denver and Arizona State. 

Mayotte said he will analyze both netminders on a game-by-game basis, and both of his goaltenders need to be prepared to start. 

It should be noted that Mbereko is on the homestretch of his final regular season and the beginning of the end of an illustrious career for the Tigers. Mbereko is the only player on the roster who has played all four seasons at CC, and most notably, his sophomore year he was named an All-American, team MVP and conference goalie of the year. Mayotte said Mbereko’s loyalty to the program does weigh in on his decision-making. 

“What he’s done for our program has obviously been incredible and not only in who he is as a player and as a leader but around campus,” Mayotte said. “In the world with NIL and revenue share and all the other things that are presented to these guys in terms of different opportunities, he has never wavered in what he wants to accomplish here and his desire to be a Tiger. That stuff is obviously really, it’s important to us, and it’s important to us that he finishes his career here in the best way possible.”