2016-17 Bowdoin Men's Hockey Year in Review

Terry Meagher was back in the Sid opening weekend, but this
time he was just a spectator. 

As we languish in the oblivion of the offseason, we will recap each team's season, as we are wont to do, from last to first.  Next up is the inaugral season of the Jamie Dumont era of Bowdoin hockey. 

8. Bowdoin
2016-17 Reccord
5-12-1 (8th in NESCAC)
8-16-1  Overall

Stats:
Overall (Conf. Rank)                                     Conference Games (Conf. Ranks)
Offense - 3.16 G/GM (3rd)                                                       Offense - 2.78 G/GM (3rd)
Defense - 3.72 G/GM (10th)                                                       Defense - 3.61 G/GM (9th)
Power Play - 14/88 15.9% (9th)                                              Power Play - 7/55 12.7% (8th)
Penalty Kill - 90/116 77.6% 9th)                                              Penalty Kill - 64/83 77.1% (9th) 
Penalty Minutes - 12.8/Gm (3rd)                                             Penalty Minutes - 11.1/Gm (5th)


Season Review
Bowdoin men's hockey had only two coaches from 1959 to 2016, Sid Watson - whom the current arena is named after - and Terry Meagher, whom NBCSN did a segment on his final year that aired during the Winter Classic coverage. The two had an impressive 58 year run in the environs of the Pine Tree State that included only four single-digit winning seasons and three of those came under Watson before Meagher had even finished his collegiate playing career at Boston University in 1976.

Jamie Dumont stepped into some big shoes, but he inherited a team that finished third in the NESCAC in 2015-16 and included the majority of the roster intact. Dumont also had a large incoming freshman class and a total of 33 Polar Bears dressed for at least two games this season, but the team could not get into a groove regardless of the lineup in black and white. Bowdoin had a single digit winning season for the first time since 1998-99 and their worst finish in the NESCAC since the league began conference tournament play a year later in 1999-20.

The primary deficiency came on the defensive side of the puck.  Junior goalie Peter Cronin had his lowest save percentage (.900) of his collegiate career (.933 as sophomore and .911 as frosh) and none of his back-ups could do better than an .894 save percentage in the eight games he didn't appear in. Disparities were not limited to offense vs defense, either, as the Polar Bears went a mediocre 5-6-1 at Sid Watson Arena but a terrible 2-10-0 on the road with both wins coming the same weekend in a trip to Tufts and Conn College.

The season ultimately ended with a 4-2 loss at Hamilton in the NESCAC Quarterfinals. The Polar Bears, who won back-to-back NESCAC titles in 2013 and 2014 have now bowed out of the playoffs opening weekend for three straight seasons.


High Point
The aforementioned weekend at Tufts/Conn College left the PBs at 6-4-0 overall and 3-3-0 in the NESCAC right in the thick of things to close out the fall semester. The sweep, along with a non-conference W against Southern Maine,were a welcome way to end the semester following a  pair of one-goal losses in the heated Colby-Bowdoin weekend home-and-home.

After last year's 10 game unbeaten streak down the stretch and the growing pains of a program adjusting to a new coach for he first time in 34 years, it was reasonable to think Bowdoin might have made a push in the second semester....


Low Point 
...but they didn't. The team floundered, going 2-12-1 down the stretch, although both of those were solid wins at home against Trinity and Amherst, 5-1 and 3-1 respectively, showing what the Polar Bears might have done if they could have kept opponents from scoring. 

When the All-NESCAC teams were selected after the regular season, no Bowdoin player made a team for the first time since 2001. 

MVP
Cody Todesco (F, '19) Todesco may not have made the All-NESCAC First Team as he did as a freshman, but the 5'7" prep school product still produced for his new coach to the tune of a 25 point (15-10-25) sophomore campaign. The diminutive forward, who bulked up this past offseason , netted his second hat trick of his career in December with both having come against the Camels of Conn College.

Off the ice, Joe Lace (D, '17) deserves some recognition for enlisting in the Marines. He had his commissioning ceremony in Bowdoin Chapel the weekend of commencement.

SR F Joe Lace had his commissioning ceremony yesterday with the US Marine Corps. Congratulations #28! https://t.co/moy1EMuQyb

— Bowdoin Men's Hockey (@bowdoinhockey) May 27, 2017

The Bowdoin program is under a major transition after nearly six decades of only two men at the helm. 

NESCAC Recruiting Twitter update

We have plenty of time before the 2017-18 academic calendar starts, let alone the official release of rosters in November with the newest class of recruits. In the meantime, let's catch-up with what the twitterverse has to tell us about the incoming commits. As with all things twitter, it is fun and accessible, but hardly reliable as a comprehensive source of information. This list is of about fifty players, and on average there are probably around 80 new recruits in a season.

Just because a player isn't listed in the twittersphere as a recruit, it doesn't mean he won't be lacing it up as a neophyte NESCACer next fall at Sage or Alfond or the Malden Valley Forum II (get an on campus rink already, Tufts!). The converse is true as well, as a 140 character commitment doesn't mean you'll be on the roster come November 1.

The recruiting mix is pretty evenly distributed among prep school players and  there's also a mix of mix of players from hockey recruits to the few that are looking to play as many sports as they can.

And if you like stories told in 140 character snippets, check out some of the game stories from past NESCAC playoffs and NCAA Tournament games.

If you know of other recruits twitter claims for the 'CAC , please tweet them at us (@hockeyinthecac) or shoot us an email with the link to the tweet. We'll update the post as more come in.

Special thanks to Neutral Zone (@_Neutral_Zone), which include rankings for their recruits. Former Tufts coach Brian Murphy is actually a scout now for Neutral Zone.

Anyhow, on to the tweets!

International Men of Mystery: NESCACers compete for Greece and USA in international competitions in Czech Republic, Israel this summer

The NESCAC season may be long over and next season may be even further away, but the opportunities to compete - and compete internationally - on and off the ice still exist this summer for NESCAC players. And fret not, these are the most D-III/NESCAC ways one could play international hockey.

World Ball Hockey Championships
Update June 10
First up in June is the International Street and Ball Hockey Federation (ISBHF)'s World Ball Hockey Championships hosted by the defending champion Czech Republic. Ball Hockey is essentially ice hockey sans skates/ice avec a ball instead of a puck. The rules are generally the same as the frozen version of our fair sport, save the expanded blue line. The offsides rule is the same, only once the attacking team enters the offensive zone center ice now becomes the demarcation between zones.

Two NESCAC players took part in the World Ball Hockey Championships -  held from June 1st through 10th - and both for Team Greece. Williams starting goalie Michael Pinios ('19) played out as a defenseman for the hellenic ball hockey team and Colby forward Phil Klitirinos ('18) played up front. Both are from Quebec, which NESCAC scholars will note is nowhere geographically near the home of the ancient philosophers they study, but the tournament rules allow for players to play for their ancestral homeland if at least one of their grandparents had citizenship for the country in question.

The two players are coming off different trends this past season on the ice. Pinios had a mediocre sophomore campaign after busting out of the gate his freshman season as a Second Team All-NESCAC goalie and Co-Rookie of the Year. Klitirinos, meanwhile, bounced back from an injury-riddled sophomore season in which he appeared in just nine games to score 25 points (7-18-25) in 24 games in 2016-17.

All games from the tournament were streamed live with English commentary, for those that are jonesing for some NESCAC puc- err - ball.  For the Williams piece with some more background on Pinios' participation in the tournament, click here.


The Greeks ended up finishing in fourth overall in the tournament, as they did in the 2015 edition of the tournament. They lost their first three games of pool play to  Canada, India and Slovaka respectively, though they picked up a point with an OT shootout loss to Canada to open the tournament. They were fourth of five in Pool A1 headed into their final game of pool play against winless Finland. Greece blanked Finland 4-0 to earn a spot in a play-in game to the Quaretfinals vs. Haiti.

Pinios, scoreless before the knockout round, netted two points (1-1-2) in a 3-1 win over Haiti, including the game winning goal on a short handed tally from behind his own redline. You read that right, and to view it, check out the video of this game at about 31 minutes in here.

The Greeks then beat the USA 4-3 in OT to earn a trip to the semis against Canada, whom they would lose to for the second time in the tournament. Canada, the homeland of both Pinios and Klitirnos, featured a former DIII player in Adrian's Shaq Merasty.

Most of these games were played to a nearly empty 10,000 person arena in Pardubice, Czech Republic. The Greeks, however, had a packed house sendoff to the tournament as they faced the host Czechs in the bronze medal game, which they lost 4-3 to the host nation.

Pinios ended up with four points for the tournament (2-2-4), good enough for third best on the team, while Klitirinos went scoreless in the eight contests.

The defending champs, Slovakia, defeated the Canucks in the final for their second straight World Ball Hockey Championships, which we all now know is a thing, thanks to the NESCAC participants.


Maccabiah Games 
Fast forward  a month, head back to the ice, and travel 2,700 miles (err 3,700 kilometers, rather) south and we arrive at our second international competition for NESCAC players this summer. Ethan Cohen ('19) of Middlebury and Chad Goldberg ('18) of Tufts will head to Israel in July to compete alongside other DIII and DI hockey players on Team USA in the 2017 Maccabi Games in Israel.

We had full coverage of the last Maccabiah Games (aka The Jewish Olympics) click here, for our interview with NHL Network broadcaster and Team USA coach Billy Jaffe, click here.
 in which Max Greenwald ('16) of Middlebury and Ben Chwick ('14) of Colby won the silver medal with Team USA in 2013. For our primer of the Maccabiah Games by Benet Pols,

Goldberg and Cohen are both coming off pointless seasons with a combined total of five games played, all by the Panthers sophomore. Cohen, a 6"0" Brooklyn native, has struggled to find playing time in his first two years in the Green Mountains with this season's handful of games the only contests he has dressed for in the first half of his collegiate career.

Goldberg, on the other hand, was selected as a tri-captain of the Jumbos for his junior season. After an injury plagued freshman and early sophomore campaign, the Agoura Hills, CA native tallied sixteen points (7-9-16) in 19 games in 2015-16 and figured to be a pivotal part of the Tufts offense in 2016-17.  A history of concussions, however, kept him sidelined for his entire junior year. You can watch Goldberg discuss his injury history in episode 10 of Inside Tufts Hockey, created by his teammate Pat Lackey, here.

This year's installment of the Maccabiah Games will take place from July 4th to 18th. The Americans will compete against Canada, Germany, Russia and Israel in the Open Division ice hockey tournament. Cohen and Goldberg will play alongside other DIII and DI NCAA players on the Open Division team, which consists of 18-25 year olds. There is also a Masters Division for players 40+ years of age (USA coached by former Open Division coach Billy Jaffe this year) and a Juniors Division for players born in the years 1999-2002. Cohen's brother Elias will be on Team USA's juniors while their father Steve will be on the masters team for a full-on family affair.

And who's that as assistant bench boss for Team USA's Open team? Why it is none other than Wesleyan alum Casey Fratkin ('14).

We'll post more info on the Maccabiah Games as it gets closer to the tournament. The next step is Team USA's training camp, which will open in late June.

Can you say the countdown is on!! Three weeks till training camp! #Macc20 🇺🇸🏒🇮🇱

— Maccabi USA Hockey (@MaccabiHockey) June 4, 2017

It will be a long shot for Greece to medal in the Ball Hockey Championships and for USA to upset Canada for Maccabiah gold, but we are true believers in our boys from the 'Cac in their summer tournaments. Here''s Bouncing Souls' anthem "True Believers" from 2001's How I Spent My Summer Vacation.