As the Christmas break ends for the Mavericks, I felt now was a good time to take stock of what has happened this season, and to look ahead to rest of the season. This season started out fantastically for the Mavericks. The Boys thundered out to the best start in franchise history at 9-1-1-0 and had a 7-game winning streak, but injuries and call-ups began to ravage the roster. In the past few weeks, the Mavericks have started to struggle. These struggles were especially apparent on their recent trip to Boise, Idaho as they took on the Steelheads and lost three games in a row in Idaho and then lost another in Wichita. When the Mavericks get back into action tomorrow in Tulsa, they have a chance to exorcize some demons and right the ship by starting out the stretch with some consecutive wins.

Home Sweet Home: The Mavericks have a record of 11-1-0-0 at home, giving up their only loss to Tulsa. The Mavericks have been nothing short of dominant at home and their upcoming schedule is going to pay off in this aspect. In January and February, the Mavericks play 22 games with only 6 of those games being on the road. In fact, they will spend every weekend in the month of January at home. Playing that many games will be a grind, but the Mavericks will benefit from having their home crowd around them and not having to travel.



Road Woes: While the Mavericks have been dominant at home, on the road they’ve been anything but. Their road record stands at 5-8-1-1. The Mavs have seemed like a completely different team when they’ve been on the road. Their defensive system has been disjointed at best, they’ve been taking too many penalties, and they haven’t been shooting the puck. The Mavericks did win their last road game before the break beating Tulsa 6-5 on December 22, but they allowed Oilers Captain Adam Pleskach to score 4 goals and once again allowed a game to be closer than it should have been.



Goaltender Carousel: The Mavericks have seen 3 different goaltenders between the pipes this season: Mason McDonald, Ben Halford, and Nick Schneider. Nick Schneider started the season with the Mavericks and performed very well before being called up to the Mavericks’ AHL affiliate the Stockton Heat. Mason McDonald started the season on injured reserve so Ben Halford started the season in his place. When McDonald was activated, Ben Halford was released. Just a few days later, Schneider was called up and the Mavericks re-signed Halford. Now, Schneider is back down with the Mavericks and there are some questions that remain about the goaltending situation.

Ben Halford has played very well and has showed great sportsmanship while with the Mavericks. His record is 4-4-0-0 with a Save Percentage of .910 and a Goals Against Average of 2.77. The 26-year-old Lenox, Massachusetts native played college hockey with the Princeton University Tigers and suited up in 4 games last season for the Fayetteville Marksmen of the SPHL. Halford can be seen as the odd man out when it comes to the goalie rotation mainly because his record doesn’t reflect how well he has played, but a .500 record may be a hard sell when choosing between him and two NHL contracted players. My hope would be they place him or Mason McDonald on reserve. If they have to release Halford again, I hope Brent Thiessen and John-Scott Dickson keep him on speed dial. The Calgary Flames’ goaltending situation is starting to be in flux again so it may be in the Mavericks’ best interest to keep Halford close.



Calamitous Call-Ups: The Mavericks have 6 AHL-affiliated players on the roster: Mason McDonald, Nick Schneider, Cliff Watson, Willie Raskob, Jordan Ernst, and Zach Fischer. All of them except McDonald have earned at least one call-up this season which has strained some of the team’s chemistry but most importantly has left us shorthanded. Most recently Jordan Ernst was recalled to Stockton and Cliff Watson signed a PTO with the Hershey Bears. Don’t expect Watson to be back, he’s an AHL caliber player and was already on the top defensive pairing for the Bears in his first game. Watson had been starting to heat up for the Mavericks before he left and lead defensemen in goals with 5. Losing him is a big loss, but the Mavericks can take it one of two ways. They can go out and find a physical and dynamic defenseman to replace him or bump someone up hoping things change.



Slammed by Injuries: Injuries have been hanging over the Mavericks from the beginning of the season. Mason McDonald and Corey Durocher started the season on injured reserve. Joey Sides sustained a serious lower-body injury in just his 4th game and it left him sidelined for a month and a half. Darian Dziurzynski has started off slowly and has been playing banged up. Mark Cooper at one point was the team scoring leader but missed 11 games with an upper-body injury. To top all of this off, Corey Durocher was finally activated from injured reserve only to sustain a lower-body injury after 3 games and be placed back on IR. Coupled with the call-ups, these injuries have left the Mavericks seriously shorthanded and has really messed with team chemistry. If the Mavericks can find a way to minimize injuries down the stretch look for their fortunes to improve significantly.



Robertson Leaves: Mavericks fans were shocked when on November 30th it was announced that veteran forward and returning Mavericks player Matt Robertson was taking a leave of absence from the team and had been placed on team suspension. Nothing was clarified about the situation beyond Coach Dickson saying Matt “had some personal things to deal with”. It didn’t sound like it was an odious turn of events but was definitely a kick in the pants to the team. Robertson had been producing well offensively and was a huge team presence. Before he left, Robertson had played in 16 games this season and had 12 points (6g,6a). This had been his third season with the Mavericks.



Defensive Doldrum: The Mavericks’ defense has been the largest issue as of late. The Mavericks have not been clearing the front of their net effectively, and have not been covering players (especially if those players had scored multiple goals). This is in stark contrast to how the Mavericks began the season. The Mavs started out with a juggernaut of a defensive core that could shut down any team in the neutral zone. Now, they have found themselves chasing more than stopping. I’m not in the locker room, I’m not in the players’ heads so I don’t know if this is a confidence issue or not but one thing can be done to fix some of these problems. The Mavericks need to add some strength and grit to the team but to the defensive core especially. When opposing players are able to just stand on the doorstep of the crease without any problems, that is a big issue and it has been happening a lot lately. Our goaltender can only do so much, and when he’s left out to dry by his teammates you can’t expect them to stand on their head in every game.



Mountain Climbing: The Mavericks have been up and down in the Mountain Division standings quite a bit this season. The Division is already shaping up to be a battle between the Utah Grizzlies, The Mavericks, and the Idaho Steelheads. At one point the Mavericks were number 1 in the division. Then they hit a 3-game losing streak and dropped and haven’t regained the top. Coming out of Idaho, they had dropped to 5th in the division. They currently sit at 3rd in the Mountain Division with 34 points and have 2 games in hand on the second place Steelheads. Utah sits at the top with 36 points, only two ahead of the Mavericks, with both Utah and Kansas City having played 27 games.

Looking Ahead

As the Mavericks enter a long stretch with a huge amount of games ahead of them, they really have the power to control the destiny of their season in the next two months. With so many games coming at home, it is a golden opportunity for the Mavericks to pull ahead and show the rest of the league that we are a team worth paying attention to. If the Mavericks can keep themselves healthy, and they can shore up their defensive holes they can truly prove if they are contenders or pretenders this season. I have every bit of faith in them, the team we saw at the beginning of the season wasn’t a fluke! But for the Mavericks to prove they are a force to be reckoned with they’re going to need to put in a lot of hard grueling work. They are capable of it, but they need to make sure they are mentally prepared for it.