Social media outlets, ever the forum for historical perspective and alliteration, have a tradition of #ThrowbackThursdays, when users post pictures or videos of yesteryear on Thursdays (though hipsters might post with the hashtag on Wednesday).
In this spirit, we are going to post a throwback video, picture and/or game on Thursdays to give you a fix for your NESCAC hockey off-season jonesing. Today we have video from Trinity/Wesleyan's outdoor game in 2011 and pictures of the oldest active rink in not only the NESCAC, but all of D-III hockey.
Throwback Video: Wesleyan/Trinity 2011 Outdoor Game
When the New York Rangers AHL affiliate Connecticut Whale had their HockeyFest in 2011, NESCAC rivals Trinity and Wesleyan got to play an outdoor game at UConn's Renstschler Field in East Hartford, CT on February 15, 2011. The Bantams won, 3-1, and 2012-13 NESCAC puckers Larry Bero (Trinity), Keith Buehler (Wesleyan) and Donald Kleckner (Wesleyan) all had assists. With many prep schools participating in the two week festival, current 'Cac players that were still in high school at the time also participated in pond hockey: football stadium edition. One such game between Avon Old Farms and Kingswood-Oxford, featured five Avon NESCAC players: Michael Flynn and Morgan Mullen of Trinity, Connor Doyle and Eric Naclerio (brother of Brown's Mark Naclerio) of Conn. College and Dylan Shamburger of Bowdoin. Mullen scored the fourth goal and Shamburger scored the eighth goal for an Avon team that routed K-O, 8-1. The lone goal for K-O came from Brett Buccigross, son of ESPN sportscaster John Buccigross. As for the Trinity-Wesleyan game, TrinTV provided highlights of the contest, which include cinematic references to Black Swan and Mighty Ducks, as well as some trash talking between Bantam and Cardinals fan(s). Find the embed below.
Throwback Picture: Sage Rink
Middlebury's Kenyon Arena and Bowdoin's Sidney J. Watson Arena are the nicest in the NESCAC, but Hamilton's Sage Rink has the most history of any building in the conference. Built in 1921, Sage is the second oldest indoor college hockey rink in use, behind only D-I Northeastern's Matthews Arena. The rink was renovated in 1993, when it received structural enhancements as well as upgrades to the lighting system and ice-making equipment.
The Utica Observer-Dispatch has a cool photo gallery of Sage back in the 1920s and now, including pictures of the building's construction. Roaming the Rinks, a website dedicated to visiting the hockey rinks of North America, made a stop at Sage in 2010 and posted a write-up as well as a photo gallery for the visit.
Below, find Sage Rink in 1921 and in 2010. If you take the virtual tour of Hamilton's campus, you can see that structures such as the Scott Field house, which houses the team's indoor track and basketball/volleyball courts, have been built since Sage's completion to connect to the rink.
Since we last updated you on 4/11, six names have been added to the incoming NESCAC recruitment class for 2013-14. Tufts added two players from juniors, a goalie in Ryan Kellenberger and a hybrid forward/defender in Sean Kavanagh. Wesleyan landed a hybrid player of their own from prep school, Cole Morrissette of Milton; Trinity added prep school forward Jordan Abrams from Buckingham Brown and Nichols. Hamilton received defenseman Bennett Hambrook from Canadian juniors. Finally, Colby, who already had a recruiting class of 11 incoming players, nabbed the first transfer of the off-season, poaching Alex Walsh from Middlebury.
Tufts
Ryan Kellenberger, of the Springfield Jr. Blues (North Atlantic Hockey League), becomes the second goalie
recruited by Tufts this season along with Ross Bendetson of Andover. The 6'3" net-minder from Los Altos, California also becomes the tallest goalie and the first to come from juniors of the eight backstops in the incoming NESCAC recruitment class.
Sean Kavanagh (courtesy Spingfield Pics)
According to this article from his town paper, The Los Altos Town Crier, Kellenberger switched to goalie from defenseman at age ten after filling in for his pee wee team's starter and subsequently beating an undefeated team. After graduating with a 4.1 GPA from Los Altos High in 2012, the Canadian-born Kellenberger spent the past year with the Jr. Blues of the NAHL. Kellenberger played in 23 games, splitting time with fellow D-III recruit and SUNY Genesso bound Matt Leon, who played in 38 games.
Kellenberger posted a 7-11-2 record with a 3.07 Goals Against Average and a .903 save percentage in the regular season for the 26-30-4 Blues. The tall goaltender earned NAHL North Division Star of the Week Honorable Mention in December 2012. The Blues were eliminated, 2-0, in a best of three play-in playoff series against the Kalamazoo Wings. Kellenberger didn't start either game, but relieved Leon in both blowouts, 7-1 and 6-0.
Tufts also recruited F/D Sean Kavanagh from the Springield Pics of the Eastern Junior Hockey League (EJHL). Several NESCAC recruits come from the EJHL this year, including Kavanagh's Pics teammate, Zak Kokosa, a forward committed to Bowdoin. Kavanagh played his high school puck at Cathedral High School in Springfield, MA, and earned ESPN Boston MIAA All-State "Best of the Rest" honors in 2011.
After doing a PG year at Andover in 2011-12, the Wilbraham, MA native played 44 games for the Pics, garnering 24 points (5-19-24). The Pics website has a post regarding Kavanagh's commitment to Tufts. In the statement, Pics GM/Head Coach Patrick Tabb says, "Sean is an offensive defenseman with good size and mobility. He is a strong character kid with a great work ethic both athletically and academically." Hamilton
Defenseman Bennett Hambrook of the Trail Smoke Eaters (British Columbia Hockey League) becomes Hamilton's ninth recruit for 2013-14. The 6'0" Kimbereley, BC native also becomes the fourth Continental recruit with a 1992 birth year, making coach Rob Haberbusch's bunch the oldest recruiting class in the NESCAC.
Hambrook spent the past three seasons in the BCHL as a member of Trail, Vernon, Prince George and Slamon Arm, tallying 18 points and 183 penalty minutes in 135 career games. This past season he was traded from the SalmonArm SilverBacks to Trail in November. Before being traded, Hambrook served as the 12th captain in SilverBacks team history. In 29 games with the Smoke Eaters, Bennett had 12 points (1-11-12). According to dropyourgloves.com, a site that tracks hockey fights, Hambrook dropped the gloves eight times in his three seasons in the BCHL. (see picture)
In a statement announcing Hambrook's commitment, Trail coach Bill Birks called Bennett a "tremendous assett" and said, "His leadership qualities and work ethic are the best I've ever been around."
Below, find an interview with Hambrook from when he was named SilverBacks captain. Besides the normal platitudes about how honored and proud he is to be named captain, you also learn the genuinely moving news that Hambrook's late mother instilled the values that earned him the C on his sweater.
Wesleyan
Meanwhile in Watertown, CT, Milton's Cole Morrissette joins his teammate Elliott Vorel in committing to Wesleyan. Morrissette, a 5'10" Bristol, RI native, was the number three scorer on Milton's team, netting 26 points (12-14-26) as a forward en route to All-ISL honors. In his first year at Milton in 2011-12, Morrissette played defense and had nine points (3-6-9). Highlights from Cole's senior season, including video from games against Thayer, St. Sebastian's and Northfield Mount Hermon, can be found here.
Morrissette is also a multi-sport athlete, playing lacrosse at Milton and Moses Brown in Providence, RI before that. Williams 2012 second team All-NESCAC goalie Sean Dougherty also played lacrosse at Milton. In addition, Morrissette played football earlier in his youth, as this highlight reel from 2007 set to the unedited version of DMX's "Tear it Up" can attest.
Trinity
Trinity has landed Buckingham Brown and Nichols leading scorer Jordan Abrams. The 5'11" 190 lb. forward and All-ISL selection had 39 points (13-26-39) this season, a marked improvement from 2011-12, when he had sixteen points (6-10-16). The Lexington, MA native, who goes by Jordy, played his entire high school career at the Cambridge,MA prep school, increasing his scoring output every season; freshman year he had four points (2-2-4) and followed it up with 13 (5-8-13) in his sophomore campaign.
Jordy was named by the New England Hockey Journal as a player to watch for BB&N prior to the 2012-13 season. Abrams also played baseball at BB&N in 2012 on the same team as Tufts defenseman Aidan Hartigan.
Colby
Walsh (courtesy of Middlebury.edu)
Blaise MacDonald is not messing around. After completing his first year as Mules head coach, the former UMass-Lowell bench boss has already recruited 11 incoming freshman from prep school and juniors for the 2013-14 season. Now he has added a NESCAC transfer to that list in Middlebury defender Alex Walsh. The 6'1" 185 lb. defender had two goals in 24 games as a freshman for the Panthers in 2011-12, but did not make Bill Beaney's roster for the 2012-13 season.
Before Middlebury, the Basking Ridge, NJ native played in Swedish juniors in 2010-11, scoring eight points (3-5-8) and spending 44 minutes in the sin bin for Nacka HK. In 2009-10, Walsh played for the Delbarton School in New Jersey, where he scored 19 points (1-18-19). Also on that Delbarton squad, future Colby teammate Matt Gelnaw and recent D-I national champion Kenny Agostino. Yale's Agostino ended the season tied for the Bulldogs team lead in points with 41 (17-24-41) and the 140th overall pick in the 2010 draft was also a piece in the trade that sent NHL veteran Jerome Iginla from the Calgary Flames to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Most recent NESCAC National Champs: 2013 Amherst men's basketball
On Saturday night, the college hockey season ended when the Yale Bulldogs defeated the Quinnipiac Bobcats, 4-0, in Pittsburgh,PA, to take the Division I men's hockey title. For Yale, a number four seed and the 15th ranked team in the 16 field tournament, it was the first NCAA hockey title in school history. Besides being the lowest ranked team to ever win a D-I NCAA hockey championship, the Bulldogs also become the first team to ever beat three number one seeds (Quinnipiac, UMass-Lowell and Minnesota) in one tournament.
Yale's victory comes just six days after the most recent NESCAC national title, Amherst's Division-III NCAA championship victory in men's basketball. The Lord Jeffs beat Mary Hardin-Baylor, 87-70, in front of a D-III championship record crowd of 6,284 at Phillips Arena, home of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. The NCAA moved the D-III title game, held in Salem,VA for the past 18 years, to Atlanta in order to include D-III in the 75th anniversary of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The other NCAA title for a NESCAC squad in the 2012-13 academic calendar came in the fall of 2012, when the Tufts field hockey team won their first ever championship. The two trophies this season bring the all-time NCAA title count to 77 for the 'CAC; all but two came after the NESCAC lifted its ban on post-season tournament play in 1993.
From its inception in 1971, the NESCAC - New England Small School Athletic Conference- has stressed academics over athletics, or as the league puts it, "keeping a proper perspective on the role of sport in higher education." As part of that "proper perspective," the league banned post-season NCAA play for member schools from 1971 to 1993. Despite this ban, the Williams' women managed to win the NCAA D-III swimming and diving titles in 1982 and 1983 by qualifying enough individuals to outscore any other team.
After breaking free in 93, the NESCAC has gone on to win a whopping 75 NCAA D-III national championships in the ensuing two decades. NESCAC football teams, like their brethren in the ivies, still have the postseason ban in effect. All other sports are free to chase after NCAA titles to their heart's content.
In men 's hockey, Middlebury is the only NESCAC school to win an NCAA championship, but they have done it a record eight times, including five straight titles from 1995-99 and a three-peat from 2004-06.
1995 Middlebury team: 1st NESCAC MIH NCAA title
The NADC Leadership Sports Directors' Cup is an award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the college that has the most success in athletics at their given level (D-I, II, III). Since the NADC Cup reached D-III in 1996, Williams has won the award every year except 1998 and 2012, with Middlebury winning in 2012. The award isn't solely based on national championships, but titles definitely help the cause.
Below, we have listed all 77 NCAA titles won by the 11 current NESCAC member schools. Union was an original NESCAC charter member, but they left in 1977 so they don't get included (Conn College took their spot in 1982). Even though Bates doesn't have a hockey program, we have included them on the list since the Bobcats are a NESCAC member in other sports. The point becomes moot though, as Bates has never won an NCAA title in any sport.
A cursory look at the list finds that Middlebury (31 titles) and Williams (27 titles) share the bulk of NESCAC's national success. The sum of all nine other schools' championships (19) is still less than either the Panthers or Ephs individual achievements. Besides Bates, Conn College and Wesleyan are the only other NESCAC schools that haven't won a national championship.
As far as the gender breakdown, the 'CAC women have 51 titles to the men's 26. The sport with the most unique NESCAC champions is lacrosse, with five schools winning at least one championship in either men's or women's lax.
Our list does not include Trinity's impressive fourteen men's squash titles, as squash is governed by the College Squash Association (CSA) and is not an NCAA sport. Same goes for Tufts sailing and the Middlebury women's skiing team, which won back-to-back titles in 1979 and 1980; women's skiing was not an NCAA sport until 1983.
The NESCAC website has a full list of NESCAC national championships, which includes the non-NCAA titles. It, however, does not include Hamilton's 2008 NCAA women's lacrosse championship, as the Continentals played in the Liberty League for lacrosse at that time. Hamilton aligned all sports with the NESCAC after the 2010-11 season.
NESCAC NCAA Division III National Championships Amherst Lord Jeffs (10) Total men's titles: (3) Basketball (2: 2013; 2007); Tennis (2011); Total women's titles: (7) Basketball (2011); Ice Hockey (2: 2009, 2010);
Cross Country (2008); Lacrosse (2003); Tennis (1999); Golf (1990);
Bates Bobcats (0) Bowdoin Polar Bears (3) Women's Titles: (3) Field Hockey (3: 2008, 2009, 2011)
Colby Mules (1) Women's Titles: (1) Rowing (2002-03) Connecticut College Camels (0) Hamilton Continentals (1) Women's Titles: (1) Lacrosse (2007-08)
Ninth place Conn College and last place Tufts both added New England prep school defenders to their list of recruits this week; Canterbury's Greg Liautaud for the Camels and Hotchkiss' Dan Camelltti for the Jumbos.
Liautaud, a 5'10" 180 lb blueliner, spent the past two years at Canterbury. In his junior year in 2011-12, he had 12 points (5-7-12) in 28 games; this past season he had 21 points (4-17-21). In addition, Liautaud earned All-Tournament honors at the Cushing Holiday Tournament and was a co-winner of the Saints' Coaches Award this year.
Before matriculating at the Connecticut school, the Butler, NJ native played Tier 1 youth hockey for the North Jersey Avalanche and high school hockey at Depaul Catholic. In 2010-11, the Conn College bound defenseman was the second leading scorer on his DePaul team with 31 points (17-14-31), good enough to place him on the All-North Jersey 2nd team. Also, according to his Canterbury Admissions Ambassador profile, his favorite animal is the moose. Maybe he should play for Middlebury?
Tufts gets Camilletti, a 6'0" 198 lb defender from Hotchkiss. The Oakville, Ontario native spent the past three years bleeding blue and co-captained the 2012-13 Bearcat varsity hockey squad. In 2010-11 Camilletti had 7 points (1-6-7) and in 2011-12 he increased that to 11 (4-7-11). Before making his way to Lakeville, CT, Camilletti played Tier 1 youth hockey for the Toronto Marlboros. In January of 2010, The Greater Toronto Hockey League selected Camilletti to play in the GTHL Top Prospects Game.
If his twitter account is any indication, Camilletti is quite excited to be a Jumbo next year.
Williams Recruits win 18U National Title Now the Patriots aren't the only championship team to play their home games in Foxboro, MA.
In addition to playing for their respective prep schools, Williams recruits James McNamara (Choate) and George Hunkele (Lawerence) also played for the Neponset Valley River Rats at the USA Hockey Tier I 18U National Championships last weekend in Pittsburgh. On Sunday, the River Rats took home the national championship with a dramatic, come from behind 4-3 victory in OT against the St. Louis Blues.
James will join his brother, Ephs blueliner Brian McNamara, in Williamstown next year. Brian's 2005 North Jersey Avalanche team won the 12U National Championship in Fairbanks, Alaska, but Brian unfortunately missed it with a fractured femur.
Former Hamilton Player, Joe Houk, in Frozen Four
Yesterday we explored the 'Cac coaching connections in the Frozen Four, which included former Hamilton coach Norm Bazin. Joe Houk, Bazin's best Continental player and the only sophomore to ever win NESCAC Player of the Year, also made the jump to Division I UMass- Lowell with his coach. With Lowell playing Yale in the Frozen Four today, David Hendrickson of USCHO has a piece on the offensive minded defenseman's rise from D-III to D-I.
After sitting out a year due to transfer rules, Houk made his D-I debut this year as a member of the River Hawks in 2012-13. Early on he had troubles adjusting to the higher level of competition, "accumulating a minu-6 statistic over the first seven games." But once Houk got his D-I frozen sea legs, he has rallied to tie for the team lead with a plus-17.
“Joe is an excellent offensive threat,” Bazin said at Wednesday’s news conference. “You haven’t seen that too much at the Division I level yet, but he’s maturing into that."
Read More: David Hendrickson USCHO - - Joe Houk follows Norm Bazin to success with Massacusetts-Lowell D-III Week We are in the middle of the NCAA's "D-III Week," which runs from April 8-14. Participating schools are holding events throughout the week to celebrate Division-III student athletes and the NCAA is giving away prizes on Facebook and twitter. The official twitter hashtag is #d3week and the NCAA's D-III twitter handle is @NCAADIII. In addition, NCAA research @NCAAresearch is tweeting out interesting facts about D-III student athletics. For more on D-III week, see NCAA president Mark Emmert's video below.
The other week, we wrote about the connections between the NESCAC and the NCAA D-1 men's hockey tournament. Three of the four teams that made this week's Frozen Four come from the East, and all three have 'Cac connections on their coaching staff.
Norm Bazin, former Hamilton coach (and two time NESCAC Coach of the Year) and UMass-Lowell program savior, has had quite a few digital/print words penned about him recently. Bazin began his coaching career as an assistant to Hamilton alumnus ('85) Tim Whitehead at Bazin's alma mater, UMass-Lowell, in the late 1990s. Whitehead would go on to coach the University of Maine for 12 seasons after leaving the Mill City in 2001. Yesterday, the Black Bears fired Whitehead after a 11-19-8 season.
USCHO has a feature on how Lowell's fight for survival as a program parallels Bazin's own near death experience in a car accident a decade ago. The Boston Globe has a similar story, which also includes the tidbit that the second year Lowell coach named his oldest son after the doctor that saved his life. Both articles give additional credit for the River Hawks revival to former congressman and current Chancellor of UMass-Lowell, Marty Meehan.
Rand Pecknold, head coach of top seeded Quinnipiac and a Conn College alumnus ('90), has also received a good deal of attention. Pecknold's rise to prominence with Quinnipiac is a bit different than Bazin's with the River Hawks. The 44 year old Conn College grad has spent his entire 19 year head coaching career as the Bobcat's bench boss and has been the only Division I coach the commuter school has ever known.
Last week, the ESPN Podcast, "The Sporting Life with Jeremy Schaap," dedicated a segment to Pecknold and his Bobcat's ascension of the college hockey ladder. Pecknold took over the then Division II Quinnipiac program in 1994. Rand minces no words on why he took the position. "I literally could not get another job." Rand supplemented his gaudy $6,700 a year coaching job by working as a high school history teacher.
Things weren't glamorous early on in Hamden, CT for Pecknold. Here's his description of the first tryout from a recent New York Daily News feature on the coach:
"I remember at the first tryout I only had 17 skaters and 12 (were goalies. I brought the 12 goalies in a room and said 'we're going take three or four goalies. If any of you don't make it, have any of you ever skated out before?" I had to ask it because we didn't have enough players...I couldn't even fathom that today."
Quinnipiac made the jump to D-1 in 1998 and was part of the now defunct Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) and then Atlantic Conference for their first seven years, before making the jump to the ECAC in 2005. The Sporting Life podcast chronicles Quinnipiac's journey from Division I after-thought to top ranked team in the nation and includes interesting angles on how they did it; from Pecknold's use of "Moneyball"- type tactics to the state of the art TD Bank Sports Center and the school's political polls. The full segment can be found in the embed below.
Quinnipiac is located 10 miles north of New Haven, CT, home of the Yale University Bulldogs, the Bobcats rival and UMass-Lowell's opponent in the Frozen Four semis on Thursday. Quinnipiac takes on Minnesota's St. Cloud State in the other matchup. Of the four teams, Yale is the only school that has ever been to the Frozen Four, but that was back in 1952 when the tournament only had four teams. USCHO has a good feature on that team, which talks of the politics of getting into the tournament, Yale's former NHL player turned coach "Iron Man" Murray Murdoch and the difficulties of playing hockey in the elevated atmosphere of Colorado.
Current Yale coach Keith Allain has no connections to the 'Cac, but his assistant Dan Muse spent a year as an assistant to Williams coach Bill Kangas' in 2007-8. Allain joined Pecknold and Bazin as part of the seven man finalists' list for the Spencer Penrose Award, given annually by the American Hockey Coaches Association (AHCA) to the best coach in Division I men's hockey.
Today, Bazin was announced as the winner of the Spencer Penrose Award. In four years, Bazin has gone from a D-III coach at Hamilton to having his River Hawks in their first D-1 Frozen Four. In that time period, Bazin has racked up four straight conference Coach of the Year awards honors (NESCAC '10,11, HockeyEast '12,13) and completed the largest single season turnaround in NCAA Division I history, taking Lowell from five wins in 2010-11 to a 24-13-1 in 2011-12. To put his meteoric rise in the coaching ranks in perspective, next year's Hamilton senior class, which includes captain Evan Haney and starting goalie Joe Quatrocchi, played their freshman season under Bazin at Sage Rink.
Pecknold was named one of the two runner-ups for the award, along with St. Cloud State's Bob Motzko; Pecknold has been a finalist for the award twice before. Last week, Pecknold became the first ECAC coach since 1998 to win the the Clark Hodder Division I Coach of the Year Award, given to the best D-I coach in New England. Pecknold and his Bobcats can boast something that no other D-I program can: in their 25 years in Division I, they have never had a losing season.
Lowell plays Yale in the first semifinal tomorrow, Thursday, April 11, at 4:30 PM. Quinnipiac plays St. Cloud State at 8:00 PM. Both games will be played in Pittsburgh at the CONSOL Energy Center, home of the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. In addition, both games will be broadcast on ESPN 2, with John Bucigroos, Barry Melrose and Clay Matvick in the booth.
The NESCAC hockey WordPress Blog posted three new recruits this week. Conn College landed Ryan Mowery, Westminter's leading scorer, and St. Sebastian forward Alex Calabro. Trinity welcomes Loomis-Chafeee co-captain Edward (EJ) Culhane.
Mowery, a 5'10" forward from Escondido (San Diego County), CA, joins Westy teammates Ethan Holdaway (Trinity),Xavier Moron (Hamilton) and Sean Orlando (Trinity) as a NESCAC recruit. After playing his youth hockey in California, Mowery spent the past two years on Westminster's varsity team. In 2011-12, he had nine points (6-3-9) for Westy. He followed it up with a big senior campaign, leading the New England Prep School Runner-ups in scoring with 32 points (11-21-32). With an October 1994 birth date, Ryan will step foot in New London, CT this fall as an 18 year old; something only 8 of the 63 recruits on the current list are young enough to claim. Below you can find Mowery's recruitment video from his San Diego days set to Joe Satriani's "Summer Song/Interview." Notice the rink with the curling markings across the circles. Not unsurprisingly, ice space is very limited on the west coast.
Mowery will be joined on the Camels by St. Sebastian's forward Alex Calabro. The 5'11" Newton, MA product spent the last two years at the Needham, MA school, amassing 5 points (1-4-5) in his junior season and 17 (11-6-17) in 2012-13. Calabro was also awarded the Coach's Award for St. Sebastian's in 2013. One caveat: Calabro's main sport is lacrosse, so he could end up opting to play lax only; the Camels men's lacrosse team is currently ranked 20th in the country. Calabro and Mowry are the first two reported forward recruits for Conn College coach Jim Ward. Before now, only two Pomfret defenders, John Cunningham and Max King, had been reported as incoming Camels. With only two graduating seniors (Dawson Luke and Sean Murray), Conn College has a rather full roster of returning players. As for Trinity, their recruit list added its seventh name in Loomis Chaffee defender Edward James (EJ) Culhane. The 5'10' redheaded defenseman from Cohasset, MA spent the past two years at Loomis Chaffee and even co-captained the 2012-13 varsity squad. EJ is NOT the son of former AHL player and Western Michigan hockey coach Jim Culhane. But just for fun, here is a video of Jim Culhane fighting in a 1989 AHL game. 2013 NESCAC Coach of the Year Matt Greason has sought a mix of junior and prep school players in his recruiting class thus far. Three of the seven recruits come from the North American Hockey League (NAHL), with four coming from New England prep schools.
Six NESCAC men's hockey players have been named to the 18 player2012-13 Division II/III New England Writers All-Star Team. Ollie Koo (D/F, Jr.) , Tim McGarry (D, Sr.) and Dan Weiniger (F, Sr.) of Bowdoin; Brandon Hew (D, Sr.) of Amherst, Ben Coulthard (G, Jr.) of Trinity, and Keith Buehler (F, Jr.) of Wesleyan. Koo made second team All-NESCAC as a forward, while the five other players were named to the first team All-NESCAC. Conference player of the year Buehler and Mcgarry made the AHCA All-American second and third teams, respectively. In addition, Buehler made third team All-USCHO and Koo made first team All-USCHO as a defender. Weiniger is the only NESCAC player to return to the New England All-Star team, having made the squad in 2011 as a sophomore. Koo, who saw time at both forward and defense this year, made the team as the only junior among the defensemen. In addition, Trinity's standout netminder Coulthard was the only junior goalie selected.
For the awards, Norwich’s Colin Mulvey (F, Sr.) grabbed Division II/III Player of the Year honors while Peter Belisle of UMass Boston was named regional Coach of the Year. Last year, Amherst senior goaltender Jonathon La Rose (F, '12) won D-II/III New England Player of the Year and his coach, Jack Arena, won Coach of the Year.
FCGU to join NESCAC Florida Golf Coast University - who recently won over the hearts of Americans with a record setting run to the Sweet 16 as a 15 seed in the D-1 NCAA basketball tournament - is set to join the NESCAC for all sports in 2013-14. With a U.S. News and World Report score of 38, Florida Gulf Coast only brings the average score of the NESCAC schools down to 82.6 from 86.7 (Wil. 100, Amh. 98, Midd. 94, Bow. 93, Ham. 87, Wes. 86, Col. 84, Bat. 83, Tuf. 75, Trin. 75, Conn. 73).
NESCAC officials cited FGCU's lack of squash and hockey, sociological dedication to a 20 year ethnographic study of what it is like to run a college out of trailer parks and Andy Endfield (men's basketball coach)'s wife as reasons for admitting the Fort Myers, FL school into the conference.
Since Bates, Middlebury and Wesleyan have already filled the 'CAC's three normal mascot limit, the Eagles will be forced to change their nickname to either the Trailer Gators or Solar Bears.
Happy April Fools Day.
New Recruit (Not a Joke) for Wesleyan
This one is actually for real. Via Robby Harbison's twitter feed, he is set to join the Wesleyan Cardinal hockey team next year. The Taft product is apparently smart enough to make his twitter account private, so we aren't able to embed the tweet. Harbison, a 5'10" defenseman from Pittsburgh who had 1 point in the 2011-12 prep season (0-1-1), spent the past three years at Taft playing alongside several NESCAC players including Williams Peter Mistretta (F, So.) and Amherst's Pat Arena (F, Fr.).
Buffalo Sabres Fire Sale
And finally...with the Wednesday afternoon NHL trade deadline looming, a Buffalo Sabres fan created this humorous "EVERYTHING MUST GO" used car dealership style mock commercial for the Northeast Division cellar dwellers.
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