With players going down with injuries left and right, it’s no wonder the SRJC Polar Bears hockey team is in the midst of a losing streak.

The Polar Bears opened November by hosting the second annual Wine Country Collegiate Classic Nov. 8-10 at Snoopy’s Home Ice. Despite high hopes for the weekend, the Polar Bears went winless in the showcase and added three more to the team’s growing list of injured players.

SRJC opened the weekend against the Metropolitan State University Roadrunners Nov. 8. Impressive goaltending kept both teams off the board for 11 minutes before Metro State scored two off goalie Jacob Pavsek in the fi rst period. The Polar Bears came back and kept the match close until Metro State scored three in the third period to take the lead.

With 16 seconds left in the game defenseman Alex De Vaughn put the Polar Bears within one and Alexi Kulikouskiy barreled in a shot with 2.1 seconds on the clock to send it to overtime. The game was still tied at 7 after a four-minute overtime, prompting a shootout. In the end it was Metro State on top, 8-7 (SO 2-1), and two SRJC players, David Horton and Josiah Nikkel, were injured and did not play the next day.

The next day SRJC took on the Bay Area Sharks. In this exhibition game against the Junior team, three players, defenseman Andreas Rahm, Nikkel and forward David Horton sat out the game due to injuries, along with defenseman Sam Davis who received a three-game suspension following an ejection against Metro State. Without these key players, the Polar Bears could not defeat the Sharks. SRJC lost the game 10-3.

Hoping to salvage at least one game in the showcase, the Polar Bears took on the Northern Arizona University Ice Jacks Nov. 10. The team started out strong with a goal by freshman forward Spencer Wright, but the Ice Jacks took a 2-1 lead after scoring off Pavsek. As NAU continued to add on in the second period, De Vaughn took a stick to the neck and was forced to leave the ice. Forward Jackson Joyce would also leave the game with an injury. At the sound of the fi nal buzzer it was NAU 8, SRJC 4.

After this recent homestand, SRJC is currently 5-6-1 in American Collegiate Hockey Association games and ranked 13th in its division. The Polar Bears started out the season strong but has since had to deal with nagging injuries, fatigue and a scramble to fi ll injured spots.

“When your top players are the ones who get hurt, your team takes notice to their absence and morale can slump. We’ve got enough top players that lead us, so the morale doesn’t take too much of a hit,” said coach Tom Billeter. “However, when we have eight-plus guys playing hurt or not in the lineup, line pairings change, systems change and special teams changes. When drastic changes like this occur your team can easily be aff ected both mentally and performance wise.”

As the team’s dynamic changes, players know what has to be done for the team to get back to the level of competition the club has established since returning from hiatus in 2009.

Many agree that better off -ice conditioning, as well as practicing lines, could help the team. Billeter said that once more players are healthy the team can establish more individual roles for players and implement aggressive attack zone systems.

SRJC hopes to end its losing streak as it looks to finish out the first half of the season on the road with games against Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and Sacramento State University.

“The team has been staying strong and we have kept our heads up,” Horton said. “Losing is part of every game. We know what we have to do and that losing this many games is not good for the outcome of our season.”