Perpetually forthcoming and explanatory, Greg Cronin prides himself in his communication skills.
He’ll take his time to formulate a clear thought, or just as easily take a different route and churn out rapid-fire observations on matters related to his men’s hockey team.
Here’s a daunting challenge for the communicator, then.
How best to explain the current dreadful record of the 1-15-4 Huntington Avenue Hockey East representatives?
“What are you going to do?” he said. “You’re going to remain positive is what you’re going to do. Never in a million years did I think I’d coach a 1-15 team. The first thing right now is keeping a positive attitude.”
The latest nightmares for the Huskies were a pair of 3-0 shutouts at the hands of the No. 5 Vermont Catamounts (15-5-2) at Gutterson Fieldhouse on Friday and Saturday.
Starting with a 4-0 shutout Jan. 7 against No. 16 Boston University, the Huskies have now gone three-plus games without a goal – the first such instance at Northeastern since Jan. 11 to 15, 1971. This amounts to a total of 180:08 minutes without a goal. Furthermore, the Huskies have had 18 power plays in these contests and have not produced a single goal with a man-advantage. In these 18 power plays, NU has managed just 11 total shots.
“The special teams have been atrocious,” Cronin said. “I’ve worked with special teams in the NHL, and we’ve done a miserable job this year.”
The team’s sole victory – a 2-0 shutout of UMass on Nov. 11 at Matthews Arena – was a long time ago. With a history of success at the professional and collegiate levels, the challenges continued to broaden for Cronin.
“I’m not sure if you want to hear this, but the thing is that we’re in every game and we compete,” Cronin said. “But we just don’t have the depth in our talent to transfer all the energy we play into goals. That’s the bottom line. I was a director of player development in the NHL, for Christ’s sake.”
Twenty games into the 2005-06 season, Cronin has some, albeit not many, positive factors to work with.
“They get down, I get down, we all get down,” he said. “The weekend is part of the culmination of the time you put into practice. We’ve played 20 games, and I’m serious when I say this: I think only three have been clunkers. I’d like to think that if you use that as a barometer of success, and with our execution and our work habit, that we’d have more than one win at this point.”
On Saturday, the Huskies experienced the worst kind of d
