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ORONO – University of Maine senior right wing Colin Shields and captain and senior left wing Todd Jackson are hoping to keep goal judges busy this season.
They may have to.
The 2003-2004 University of Maine hockey team will be without players who produced 60.7 percent of the goals and 62.8 percent of the assists a year ago.
The Bears will hold their first practice on Tuesday and open the season against defending two-time NCAA champ Minnesota in the Nebraska-Omaha tournament on Oct. 10.
The top five scorers and eight of the 15 leading scorers have departed.
Shields and Jackson are the team’s top returning scorers and the only ones who scored 10 or more goals last season.
Shields finished with 14 goals and 13 assists in 34 games and Jackson had 13 goals and 13 assists in 39 games.
Shields is a pure sniper and British national team player who scored 42 goals in his first 58 college games but had only one over his last 18 due primarily to two injured ribs. However, that one goal came in the season-ending 2-1 loss to Michigan in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and snapped a 17-game goal-scoring drought.
“That got the monkey off my back. It would have been a long summer if I hadn’t scored there,” said Shields at Maine hockey media day Wednesday.
“I got off to a good start last year but, with the injury [suffered in a 4-1 win over Iona on Dec. 13], I really didn’t feel comfortable again until the Michigan game,” explained Shields, whose 29 goals earned him a berth on the Hockey East All-Rookie team two seasons ago.
The Glasgow, Scotland native scored four goals for Great Britain in the World Championships in Croatia last spring and tied for the tournament lead.
“After last season, I wanted to make sure I came into this year in the right frame of mind,” said Shields. “I trained hard this summer. I went to California and trained under T.R. Goodman. There were a lot of NHL guys out there like [Chris] Chelios, [Rob] Blake and the Primeau brothers [Keith and Wayne].
“The workouts were a lot more intense and focused than anything I had done in the past. I had the opportunity to see how professionals train. They train harder than anybody. It was certainly good for me to be involved in it. It certainly made a difference,” Shields added.
They also played pick-up games “and that was pretty good, too.”
Jackson is more of a speedy defensive specialist and all-around player but he will put more emphasis on goal production.
“People are going to have to step it up and I’m going to do my best to contribute offensively and still keep my defensive game intact,” said Jackson, who has 24 goals in 117 career games.
“There’s a fine line. You want to put the puck in the net more when there are holes to fill but, at the same time, you don’t want to try to force things or compromise the defensive part of the game in hopes of scoring more goals,” said Jackson.
The Bears have just five returning forwards who appeared in 25 or more games last season, when they went 24-10-5.
That will mean a lot of new faces up front.
But third-year head coach Tim Whitehead is confident the new players will be productive and will be able to complement the returnees.
“It will be a shared responsibility,” said Whitehead. “When you lose a big chunk like that, you’re going to have to get contributions from everybody. You never want to put pressure on one or two players alone to carry a whole team because if one of those guys gets injured, where are you going to be?
“We’re really going to focus on getting contributions on offense from a lot of different people, including our defensemen,” Whitehead added.
“There will definitely be an adjustment period early on for our team and a lot of the younger guys,” agreed Jackson, who spent a lot of time shooting pucks this summer. “But I think there are a ton of guys who can jump in and fill the holes.”
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