Injuries. Again.

After a solid win over Clarkson at Cheel Arena Friday night, Brown had every chance to, and should have beaten St. Lawrence on Saturday evening. The Bears held a 2-1 lead in the third period, and coughed it up to a resilient Saints team for an eventual 3-2 loss. 

But the loss to the mediocre Saints was overshadowed  by a much more serious loss. Key defenseman Matt Wahl is out for 2-3 weeks now with a shoulder injury. That's especially devastating considering our next three weeks of opponents: 11th-ranked Dartmouth and Harvard, who just came back from a 5-2 deficit to beat ninth-ranked Boston University at Agganis Arena, come to Meehan this weekend. Both teams have beaten the Bears this season already. 

Brown will travel to 16th-ranked Cornell and 20th-ranked Colgate the next week, a place that has historically been fruitless for the Bears. As if that weren't bad enough, 4th-ranked Quinnipiac (yes, the team with the 16-game unbeaten streak. No, that is not a typo) comes to Providence the following weekend. And Princeton, who is no slouch, having garnered five votes in the most recent USCHO.com poll, will head to College Hill the following night. 

Yikes. 

That's a brutal stretch for the Bears to be missing their second-most important defenseman, as well as backup goalie Marco DeFilippo (oh yeah, did I forget to mention that? He's out indefinitely with a knee injury). The patchwork defense and unproven Anthony Borelli have thus far held their own, but in all honesty, it can only last for so long. 

Though Brown fans will continue to hold their collective breath every time a shot is thrown at Borelli's net (which is indicative of how worried we truly are about our goaltending situation), the harsh truth is that eventually, teams will find a way to pick apart Brown's depleted defensive corps and average goaltender who happens to have put up amazing statistics. 

The defense has been keeping us in games all season (with the exception of the Providence debacle, of course), and the offense has scored just enough to win certain games. That isn't going to get us anywhere going forward, given our horrifyingly-thin defense at the moment. 

Brendan Whittet has done a fantastic job of keeping his team, as tattered and disheveled as it is at the moment, focused on each individual task at hand. He has not made a single excuse regarding injuries, and has refused to allow his players to do so, as well. He has instilled the belief among them that although several important players are missing, Brown should still be able to compete in every game it plays. 

And it has. But I'm not so sure it can continue to do so in its current state. In the back of Whittet's mind, he's got to be dreading what seems to be inevitable at this point: at some point, teams will figure out how Brown has been so successful defensively with Anthony Borelli in net, and they will counteract it and torch us. 

But for now, quite possibly the two biggest games of the season are this weekend. If the Bears are to remain relevant and hopeful, it is necessary to get at least two points in each of the next three weeks.