Home has not been kind to Iowa Heartlanders this hockey season

CORALVILLE - The crazy part about these Iowa Heartlanders are their splits. They are the opposite of what you’d expect.

Completely opposite.

Iowa went into its annual Kids’ Day morning game at Xtream Arena with more wins than losses on the road but fewer wins than losses at home. Way fewer wins.

Wednesday’s 5-4 overtime win over the Kansas City Mavericks was just the third this ECHL season for the club at its own rink. That’s in 12 games.

Elliot Desnoyers scored exactly six minutes into the seven-minute, three-on-three extra period. It was his second goal of the game (and this season), and he also assisted on Iowa’s other three goals.

That sent the 2,923 fans in house home happy. Well, actually, the majority of those fans were school kids and had departed by game’s end.

The Heartlanders had 2,300 tickets reserved for kids from Iowa City and surrounding communities. That’s more than double than last season, according to Heartlanders Director of Broadcasting and Communications David Fine.

“This is a tremendous credit to the work the Heartlanders have done in the community,” Fine said. “Not only for this one game, but the team has gotten more and more active with bringing players out to schools, really getting into the nitty gritty of trying to be a part of the educational process. And trying to show that this is fun and trying to get people to come out.”

Back to the ice.

Iowa is in sixth place in the ECHL’s Central Division with 18 standings points on an 8-11-2-0 record. It’s still fairly early, so there’s no reason to panic too much there.

But the home-road thing is a bit concerning. The Heartlanders are 5-3-1-0 on the road, which is honestly good.

Now if they can enjoy some home cooking.

“We’re definitely still a work in progress,” first-year head coach Chuck Weber said. “I think we lack consistency is the biggest thing. Been spending a lot of time with the guys on habits. We’re a young team, and I think a lot of guys are still learning how to be a pro. I have had to spend a lot of time with guys on ‘Hey, are you weighing in and weighing out to measure your water loss? Your rehydration. Are you eating properly? Are you sleeping properly? Those types of things are things that we are trying to work on with our guys.’”

Weber said there are times in games when it plays proper from a structure standpoint and times when it doesn’t. Times when it is fully engaged emotionally and times when it isn’t.

This game was kind of a microcosm of that. Kansas City scored first but the Heartlanders got four of the next five goals for a 4-2 lead through two periods. Kansas City tied it in the third on goals 13 seconds apart.

Desnoyers — who began this season in the higher-level American Hockey League, and who has played a couple of games in the NHL in his career — went end to end down the right wing and scored on an in-close backhander to win it.

“If I knew how to fix that, it’d be fixed already. It’s the old coaching cliche that way,” Weber said of the home-road splits for his club. “That’s where we talk about habits ... Just with the guys, about sleeping, eating, all that stuff. On the road, you’re together. When you’re at home, you’re apart.

“So we’re trying to get the guys to almost self-evaluate. OK, what do I do at home? What do I do on the road? OK, I like my road game better, so what do I do at home to get there? Self evaluations, just a big thing we’re trying to work on right now. I’m trying to teach guys how to be pros. We just have so many younger guys that unfortunately don’t know how to be a pro hockey player, yet.”

Weber has won a league championship in his career, so he knows what he’s doing. He returned to professional hockey and the ECHL this season after eight years in college hockey as an assistant at RPI.

“There are moments where you remember why you wanted to get out of the league,” he said with a smile. “Then there are moments where it’s ‘You know, I missed pro hockey.’”

Wednesday was one of them.

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