Healthy Hunter Fejes on a resurgent path with Colorado College

Brandon Parker, a would-be power-play point patroller for Alabama-Huntsville, could only recover the errant pass for two seconds. He had hungry company on his tail as he tried to pilot a routine regroup by pivoting back from the red line in neutral territory.

Hunter Fejes, one of the front corners of Colorado College’s penalty-killing box, closed in on Parker along the center-ice wall to dislodge the puck. From there, he raised an upper hand that neither Parker nor another impromptu backchecker could reach.

Fejes finished the singlehanded turnover by swooping to the Chargers porch from the left lane and depositing a backhanded icebreaker. Though it was only the 8:59 mark of his team’s second engagement of the season, the feat impelled him to employ his best Alexander Ovechkin impression.

There was no shortage of carbonated catharsis fueling Fejes’ leap at the glass along the lower boards of the attacking zone. For the junior forward and Arizona (nee Phoenix) Coyotes prospect, that Oct. 11 goal was his first since the 2013 WCHA Final Five.

That’s right. His eighth goal and 14th (and final) point in a promising rookie season had come on March 21 of the previous calendar year. The interim had packed two Memorial Days, two Independence Days, two Coyotes development camps, two Labor Days, a conference change for the Tigers in 2013 and a coaching change for the program in 2014.

“That was a big relief,” Fejes confessed to Along the Boards in a phone interview this week. “I don’t think I could have been any more excited. You could probably tell by the celebration I had there.

“Everyone enjoys doing that, so to get one after not scoring one for such a long time was great.”

Fejes has since polished a power-play conversion as the Tigers’ only tally in a 3-1 loss to mighty North Dakota on Oct. 17. He nearly had another goal that night, though UND’s celestial stopper Zane McIntyre had an answer.

He most recently assisted on both strikes in a 6-2 road loss to New Hampshire eight nights later. With that, he has taken six games to quadruple his junior output from his sophomore struggles, which yielded one solitary assist in 26 outings.

“It’s really satisfying,” he said. “You can never be complacent with where you’re at. Last year, obviously, I struggled offensively, so I made sure to come into this year with a clear mindset, help this team, turn this bus around.”

“My linemates,” he added. “I can’t do it without them. They’re giving me everything I need.”

What he needed at the dawn of 2014-15, though, was a fresh sheet and a clear head. Whatever he would do with that would advance his drive to breathe easier and skate more smoothly, both figuratively and literally.

“The best possible thing I did”

A foundation for regular top-six action was in place for Fejes on the heels of his 14-point freshman campaign. On the heels of a barely sub-.500 campaign, the Tigers were graduating four prolific seniors from their strike force — most notably Rylan Schwartz, he of 100 career assists.

As the program’s fourth-most productive returning forward, Fejes figured to assume no small share of the rebuilding lift. In alignment with logic, he was certain he would be up to that task.

Instead, he found himself slogging through an unforeseen, individual rebuilding project after taking a one-two slash from illness and injury.

“I came into the season very healthy, thought I was in good shape,” he recalled. “And then in the early part of the season, I ended up getting bronchitis, and that kind of set me back. I wasn’t able to compete the way I could compete.”

So much so that he brooked a 20-game pointless skid that spanned the season opener through Jan. 17. He returned to the lower half of the depth chart whilst failing to land more than two shots on goal in any of his first nine ventures.

Fejes finally splashed his drought in the point column Jan. 24 amidst an uplifting 4-1 win over NCHC rival Miami. His homeward-bound feed to Charlie Taft spotted the Tigers a 3-0 advantage at 15:45 of the first period, emboldening their path to the end of a 10-game winless streak.

But it would not be long before belated hope began to recede, at least for 2013-14.

Unable to ignore the agonizing aftermath of what he recounted as a “slew foot” incident that thrust him awkwardly into the boards, he made one appearance in a span of nine games due to a high-ankle sprain.

“I kind of just ended up trying to fight through things, but that was a hard one to fight through,” he said. “I lost all the strength on my ankle. I felt like I was re-tweaking it when I tried to fight through it. People have always told me that it’s better to break your ankle than to get a high ankle sprain.

“There was finally a point there when I said to myself, ‘This isn’t getting any better, I’m not helping the team the way I should.’”

Forcing his appetite for action aside, he approached then-head coach Scott Owens to deliver the same declaration. He boldly confessed his belief that it would serve the Tigers better for him to withdraw for a while.

“Obviously, it was tough for me to do that, because I consider myself a competitor and always want to be out there,” he said. “But at that point, it was the best possible thing I did.”

Upon scrapping his first comeback attempt after briefly skating in a Feb. 14 bout with Western Michigan, Fejes sat out another five games until the March 8 regular-season finale. He joined the third line that night, then spent two of three NCHC quarterfinal bouts accepting grunt work assignments on the fourth troika.

Scratched from the lineup altogether for the rubber match, in which North Dakota ended CC’s abysmal 7-24-6 ride, Fejes had mixed feelings about the ensuing seven-month wait for another shot.

“I believe it was very hard for me to go off into the offseason like that, especially after the season I had,” he said. “You wish you could have more success. But it was probably the best scenario that happened because I was able to recover, make sure to get healthy, reflect on why things didn’t go why I wanted them to and just focus my mindset on next year.

“Confidence was a huge thing. It’s the biggest thing to hockey, and maintaining that is the hardest thing. So I believe it was for the best.”

Intangible reformation

The temptation to tag Fejes with the “new-and-improved” label is tough to turn away from

He is roughly a full year removed from the respiratory residue and more than a half-year beyond the swelling over his skate. He is seeing those long-awaited top-six minutes, and using them to charge up a team-leading 29 shots at the opposing cage.

Fejes does not deny he has upgraded some aspects of his game, but he prefers to point to unseen forces. Contemplation and mental rehearsal, he holds, keyed his brewing bounce-back season this autumn.

“I believe I have the skill set and all that stuff,” he said. “But I think the biggest part was the battle side of it. I focus on my effort and attitude.

“I figured if I could improve in those areas, then I would be good.”

More than his triumphant return to his freshman form, the two added years of adversity-induced appreciation make Fejes an indispensable cog for Colorado in the inaugural year of the Mike Haviland era. Whereas the wounded Fejes, by his own admission, was best out of the equation, the recovered version is bringing exemplary commitment to a still-struggling program.

Since finishing their sweep of the Chargers with the help of Fejes’ liberating shortie, the Tigers have lost four straight. As October gives way to November, a rare weekend free of game action comes at a welcome point after three consecutive opposing runaways of four- or five-goal margins.

With his proven capabilities at even strength and on both sides of the special teams’ spectrum, Fejes figures to join the nucleus in CC’s search for stability. Moreover, the Tigers will likely lean on him as a learned upperclassman who knows how to weather on- and off-ice hardship.

“If things aren’t going the way we want, if I’m not getting as many shifts as I want, I can’t let any of that creep into my mind,” he said. “Once I do that, it’s going to be detrimental.

“Like I said, I’m just focusing on what I can control, just making sure I compete and work hard every single day.”

This article originally appeared on Along the Boards

Madison Litchfield filling big pads for Vermont women’s hockey

Madison Litchfield is one of the most loyal longtime supporters of the Vermont women’s hockey program. It is therefore fitting that she may have the best seat in the Gutterson Fieldhouse for the Catamounts’ best years to come.

That is, they will be their best years if, among other variables, she has her say. The Burlington-area resident of one-and-a-half decades has taken the torch from the record-setting Roxanne Douville as the team’s new No. 1 netminder.

In a Thursday phone interview with Along the Boards, Litchfield recounted the crux of her upbringing in nearby Williston, Vt., where she had moved with her family at the age of five.

It was then and there that a then-fledgling women’s program at the state university cemented her passion for pucks.

“I was pretty set that I wanted to play hockey,” she said. “It was going to be my sport.”

Litchfield was frequenting the Fieldhouse when the Catamounts, who began varsity competition in 1995, upgraded from Division III to Division I for the 2001-02 season. She was around when the ECAC patches in the upper left corners of their jerseys gave way to Hockey East emblems in 2005.

Litchfield latched on to her adopted hometown club to such a degree that she willingly weathered a perpetual chain of needle-lean years. Even while rounding out her preparatory honing with the Junior Women’s League’s Boston Shamrocks, she would sneak glimpses of away games at Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern.

Home or road, she carried no qualms about backing head coach Tim Bothwell’s struggling students, who never mustered more than five victories in any of his six seasons at the helm.

“Leading up to when I came here, I watched the team struggle a bit here and there,” she allowed.

But when the time came for her own college commitment in the winter of 2013, the prospect of a hometown discount was looking less like a cheap investment in the way of winning. Vermont had parted with Bothwell in favor of Jim Plumer, who as part of his first round of recruitment tabbed the local product as one of the dynamic Douville’s apprentices.

“I remember sitting down with him and knowing that he had the power to turn this program around,” Litchfield recalled. “I wanted to be a part of that turnaround. I knew they weren’t doing great at the time, but…”

As his first impression, Plumer doubled the Catamounts’ win count from 2011-12 in both Hockey East and national action. That is, he improved them from three wins in the league and four overall to six and eight in those categories.

The fact that the WHEA expanded its playoff bracket to include all eight tenants, effective in 2013, made Vermont’s first postseason less than flattering. Even so, there was a foundation waiting when Litchfield submitted her letter of intent and entered already familiar territory in her new capacity.

Substantial support

A goaltender’s mask serves as an appropriate punctuation on the trite, yet apt Jekyll-Hyde parallel surrounding the sport’s participants. Its application to the head is a harbinger of the team’s most isolated and most dissected component’s immersion into fearsome focus.

Litchfield still undertakes that transformation on behalf of the Catamounts, Douville does not. But both mugs still grace the Gutterson Fieldhouse, the latter as the program’s new volunteer goaltending instructor.

“It’s awesome to still have Rox here,” Litchfield said. “I know exactly how she plays and she still has so much to teach. It’s great to have her verbalizing those lessons.”

Yes, verbalizing, as opposed to venting with a Voorhees- and vacuum-like temperament, the way Douville did amidst a season-long scramble for crease time in 2013-14.

“Last year, it was always that competitive atmosphere during our practices. We were trying to beat each other out in a friendly competition,” Litchfield said as the first half of the contrast. “Today, she’ll say ‘I noticed this, let’s work on that.’”

Though the Catamounts are a mere six games into the current campaign, and raring to face Union in their annual “Pack the Gut” event Friday, that work is yielding instant gratification.

At 3-2-1 on the year, Litchfield boasts a .928 save percentage and 1.99 goals-against average. She has limited the opponent to no more than two goals in five of those six outings.

Contrast that with her rookie stat line: 4-4-1 with a 3.50 GAA and .870 save percentage within 10 full or partial appearances.

“Last year, I remember going into some games unexpectedly,” she said. “This year, I knew Rox was gone, all of the pressure was going to be on my shoulders and that all eyes are going to be on me.

“But our team has been unbelievable in front of me, supporting me, clearing away rebounds. They have been phenomenal, making it easy for me.”

Therein sits the missing ingredient from when Vermont last infused a new celestial starter.

Unfinished rise

Douville’s arrival in 2010, when Litchfield was a sophomore in high school, marked the first rumbling of a revolution. The freshman phenom out of Beloueil, Que., kept the Catamounts in games at a rate that defied logic.

Discounting empty netters, she confined the opposition to zero, one or two goals 16 times in 22 appearances. Her reward was a sparkling .931 save percentage and 1.91 goals-against average, two bars no one else has reached in the program’s Division I era.

If the lack of a proper stable of skating mates was not self-evident in her 5-11-6 record, it was in her all-around statistical nosedive over the next two years. Her GAA swelled to the three range and save percentage dipped to .901 and .903 for 2011-12 and 2012-13, respectively.

But after Litchfield enrolled last season, while Plumer was seeking a sophomore surge behind the bench, Douville concocted a timely fireworks finale. She matched her freshman stoppage rate of .931 and coupled it with an even two goals against per night.

By the final weekend of February, Litchfield had an ultimate rinkside seat to her predecessor’s crowning culmination at the campus barn.

As part of UVM’s first winning season since its 2001 promotion (18-14-4 overall, 13-7-1 in league play), Douville backstopped a 3-2, triple-overtime victory over visiting Maine in the 2014 Hockey East quarterfinals.

The BC Eagles, perennial conference semifinalists and NCAA tournament entrants, ended the milestone thrill ride the following week with a 3-1 win. But Douville had already set another high mark with 14 victories, the most in a single season by any UVM stopper.

Her protégé could not have requested a more inspiring and educational buildup in advance of this year’s inevitably elevated workload.

“I think the best part of last year was that I got to watch how Rox played, how she handled every situation,” said Litchfield. “It was really fun to get my feet wet last year.”

“(Coming into) this year,” she added, “I felt more comfortable knowing how people were going to play and the pace they were going to play at.”

The netminder’s newfound know-how is the Catamounts’ key to propping up what Douville started. Similar growth in other positions will be pivotal in their drive for more passports to the WHEA semifinals in Hyannis, Mass., let alone a bigger splash if they get there.

“Coach (Plumer) always says that the hardest part is still ahead of us,” Litchfield said. “Our goal this year is to just make it farther.

“There’s no question we will have to battle through that quarterfinal to get back to Cape Cod. We just have to keep pushing ourselves.”

This article originally appeared on Along the Boards