Penn State men’s hockey looks to overcome mental challenges ahead of season-defining stretch
This past weekend Penn State head hockey coach Guy Gadowsky cited “mental toughness” as an issue in defeat.
A few weeks ago after an embarrassing loss to Michigan, it was that his team was “mentally unprepared.”
And now heading into its biggest series of the season against co-leader in the Big Ten, Ohio State, Penn State is searching for the correct mentally to overcome these mental hurdles.
“It takes more than just practicing on the ice I’ll tell you that,” Gadowsky said. “That’s the art of it. The teams that are able to figure it out have a definite advantage over the ones that don’t but I don’t think there is an exact science to how you do it.”
And that is the tough part of mental obstacles.
They aren’t fixed with practice or a session in the weight room.
And the mental aspect in the game of hockey impacts every single play on every single shift, one lapse could be the difference in the game.
“There are so many different factors that go into each play,” forward Alex Limoges said. “We say it all the time that there are no ordinary plays whether it’s chipping the puck out of the zone in the first five minutes of the first period, every play is big. And it is magnified in the third period.
“Mentally you have to be ready at the drop of the puck, at the start of overtime, before every shift. It’s a lot that goes into it, that’s for sure, and not a lot of people see that.”
The process to overcome these challenges is different for every single person in the Nittany Lions locker room.
“It is something that each player takes differently,” Limoges said. “Some guys can do it by joking around before the game and stuff like that, other guys need to sit there with their headphones in and visualize it.
“So it ranges from person to person but as a whole knows when we are wrong and when we need to step up.”
And how to personally, best prepare for a game is a lesson that freshman Tyler Gratton learned early in his Penn State career.
“A big thing is visualization inside the game to prepare for the weekend and prepare for the game that night,” Gratton said. “It’s a really good habit to visualize what you are going to do and be able to visualize the good habits but also the bad habits that you are trying to break.”
According to Limoges, players can normally tell early in the morning where they are mentally and it is once again an important, but personal process to refocus before games.
“There are some days where maybe you had a long week or you had a test earlier in the morning and are kind of mentally fatigued,” Limoges said. “But I think guys on this team do a good job and know where they are supposed to be at on a gameday and refocus. I think guys know when they are not in the right spot to play.”
Gadowsky and the rest of the Penn State coaching staff then have a unique job of tying all of these things together, to unify the team mentally, something that is much easier said than done.
“We are learning together. Trust me, the coaching staff doesn’t have the answer right now,” Gadowsky said. “We are trying, we are really working hard to figure it out and do what we can but we don’t have any guaranteed answers. The coaching staff and players are learning together. It is constant.
“I would like to think every time we are in a meeting or on the ice in practice or in video sessions that we are working on exactly that.”
Gadowsky and the rest of the coaching staff, need to find these answers and need to find them quickly.
Penn State is in the midst of a slump, only winning one of its past six games.
The Nittany Lions also haven’t won a Big Ten game at home since Nov. 22, going 0-3-2 in Pegula in Big Ten games since.
Despite this, however, Penn State still leads the Big Ten standings and completely controls its own destiny as far as making the NCAA Tournament, but if this losing streak continues into this weekend in Columbus all that could change.
According to defenseman Paul DeNaples, however, these rough patches are all a part of the journey
“In life you get down on yourself. You get negative and feel like nothing is going your way but the best players, the best teams always go through the rough-patches,” DeNaples said. “I mean look at the St. Louis Blues last season, worst in the league and they came out and won the Stanley Cup.
“It is a mentality and you believe in yourself. It’s there and it can happen.”
The test though for Penn State comes this weekend, the test to see if the Nittany Lions have found some of these answers and DeNaples is confident that the team will.
“Obviously this past weekend was a wakeup call for guys and it will be a true test to see how we come back the rest of the season,” DeNaples said. “For the the team that everyone thinks we are and who we think we are, we are going to come out and play. And I think we will.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 12:32 PM.
