RIO RANCHO, NM – Don’t look now but the Scorpions are playing their best hockey of the season and are now just four points out of a playoff spot with a game in hand.
What!?!
Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus. Or at least a protractor with a funky way of balancing equations.
By the end of January this club was going nowhere. Week after week the club was turning the corner on their season only find themselves in one more cul-de-sac of the damned in the Central Hockey League suburbs.
Mired in a season-long funk brought on by poor play and a financial sword of Damocles, the Scorpions were about to become a footnote in the annals of CHL hockey.
Then a curious set of comings and goings appeared on the CHL transaction wire. First of these curiosities was the departure of goalie Jason Wolfe who resurfaced in Bloomington of the International Hockey League. Wolfe was unhappy and found himself a spot on the Prairie Thunder’s roster.
A young free agent goalie was signed by the name of Kyle McNulty of Rhode Island. More on him in a bit.
Then there was the curious trade of forward Mitch Stephens for even younger netminder Ryan Gibb from the Laredo Bucks. At the same moment head coach Randy Murphy waived his number one goalie, Andrew Martin. Within 4 nanoseconds of that transaction wire announcement Martin was picked up by the Laredo Bucks’ Terry Ruskowski.
That is a lot of subtraction. Even in the current economic environment where subtraction is all the rage, the loss of Stephens and Martin, on the surface, was seen as a write-off of the already dismal 2008-2009 CHL season.
Lost in the oddities was the addition of former Scorpions’ forward Ross McCain and enforcer Adam Knight late of the Colorado Eagles.
But back to the oddities of the wire moves. The number one and number two goalies of a struggling team and franchise were gone. In their stead, stood two young, green goalies with little experience to carry a club. Add in the presumed “dumping” of forward Mitch Stephens and the negative side of the ledger is very red.
Instead, the Scorpions look to have ridded themselves of a soft forward in Stephens who lasted nary a week in Laredo before he was traded again, this time to Rapid City. Easily bumped off the puck on a rush up ice Stephens seemingly had become a liability on the New Mexico roster. For him, Murphy managed to get himself a young goalie with good legs and plenty gas for a stretch run.
But Murphy also stepped in the proverbial pile of magic goo when he brought in Knight and lured McCain back to Rio Rancho. Knight’s toughness has made room for the likes of Christopher Robertson to skate more freely. Welcome news to Robertson and the rest of the forwards.
McCain’s addition has added some maturity to the team and bolstered team defense on a previously porous back line. McCain’s back-checking has added a dimension to the game not seen all season.
As the ice chips have settled from the trades and waivers the team has gone 6-3-0 in their last nine games and are now serious threats to both the Corpus Christi IceRays and the Arizona SunDogs who sit tantalizingly close.
And here is where Kyle McNulty is re-introduced. The 26-year old Wakefield (RI) native was out of work as a hockey goalie and skated in the Eagles’ pre-season camp this season before missing the cut.
His first game experience with the Scorpions was in a mop-up role against the Odessa Jackalopes who had toyed with New Mexico for two periods. McNulty was solid and did not allow a goal. He appeared in two other games as a reliever and showed some flashes of decent play.
Since then however, McNulty has started every Scorpion game and posted a 6-3-0 record with a 2.75 goals against average and 0.912 save percentage. Plus, he recorded his first professional shutout with a 5-0 win over Odessa in New Mexico.
Two of his losses came in back-to-back defeats to Laredo where he was done in by 5-on-3 situations handed to the Bucks in both games. The two losses represented some of the best hockey played in Rio Rancho this season.
But the turnaround is not just McNulty. The entire Scorpions’ roster is playing excellent hockey including team defense and opportunistic offense.
The 2007-2008 Scorpions were best characterized by the heart they displayed and that team left everything on the ice. Randy Murphy may have found the formula for success again.
And it is not too late either. At this writing the IceRays are four points up on the Scorpions but New Mexico has a game in hand. The SunDogs are losing their latest contest and that would leave them only three points in front of the Scorpions with that same game in hand.
Go figure. If you let deadwood drift away and rid yourself of ineffective forwards you add to your roster through subtraction.
Contact the author at lou.lafrado@prohockeynews.com .
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