You don’t often hear about teams calling for players-only meetings four games into a long season, but that’s exactly what Penn State hockey did after Friday night’s game.

The then-No. 9 Nittany Lions were completely outplayed in a 4-0 loss to Alaska-Fairbanks, which finished last season well outside the NCAA tournament conversation with a 12-21-3 regular-season record. Although the final shot count ended 35-23 in favor of the Nittany Lions, Guy Gadowsky’s program was well and truly beaten Friday night.

Penn State took Friday’s result as a much-needed kick in the ass, and the players used that to hold a players-only meeting in their dressing room. Gadowsky said Monday that the response was “very appropriate.”

“None of us are happy with that result and how we’re playing,” he said. “That result was very telling of the way we played. Our third period, we got outshot 13-7 and outscored 2-0. We didn’t create any chances whatsoever. There’s certain aspects from an effort and commitment level we have to change.” 

After the game, Gadowsky said that the Nanooks played harder than any other opponent he’s faced. You can reasonably make the argument that the loss was one of the worst in program history — if not the worst. A middling Fairbanks side came into Pegula Ice Arena and thoroughly dispatched of a team many think is capable of competing for a national championship.

Gadowsky was especially critical of his team’s mentality through the first four games of the season. He didn’t put any blame on his line combinations or defensive pairings, which worked well throughout most of Penn State’s first three games of the year, and instead placed the blame on the way his players were thinking entering the game.

“It seems now that we’re holding our value as to how skilled and talented we are rather than how we play. I think that’s the whole issue here,” Gadowsky said. “We have to get back to how we feel about ourselves as the effort we give and not the talent we have. It speaks to a lot, but that’s what I think is going on. We are valuing our talent more than we’re valuing our team play, and we have to get back to what Penn State was built on.

“In this case, the result was 100% indicative of the mentality that we can control. That’s really disappointing to us, and it’s disappointing because this wasn’t our first talk.”

The Nittany Lions got their first real experience with adversity during a 5-4 win over Sacred Heart. Penn State conceded three goals in the final period of that contest — including two in six seconds — and struggled defensively despite picking up a much-needed victory.

Penn State’s resounding 7-0 win over the Nanooks in the first game of their series made Friday’s lethargic, bad performance sting even more.

“We got a positive result last Saturday night, but we didn’t feel really good,” Gadowsky said. “We already had a warning, and we tried to address and work on it. And then we got the performance as well as the result this [Thursday] night. That’s why this one hurts.”

So what’s next for the Nittany Lions? They take on Robert Morris in a rare one-off game at 7 p.m. Friday, and Gadowsky said his players have to avoid overlooking another mediocre opponent.

“If you allow yourself to get outworked — and sometimes that happens if you are looking past [an opponent] — you’ll get a result like the one we got Friday night. What happened Friday is going to help us not look past [Robert Morris],” he said. “It’s not like we lost a game and need to overreact. It’s the way we lost and the way we feel about ourselves right now.”