PETE PAGUAGA — Sports Editor
The Ice Owls finished last season very strong, after failing to qualify for the National Tournament; they regrouped and won the Empire Collegiate College Conference in a 6-5 overtime thriller, where Steven Rosencrantz scored the game-winning goal.
This season the Ice Owls, are replacing four important players from last year’s team. Sam Brown, Michael Dubecky, Pete Bon Tempo and Joe D’Amato all will not be on the team this season. Rosencrantz will replace Brown, who was one of the three captains last season, as a captain.
There will also be many new faces suiting up for the Ice Owls this season said captain Joe Innamorato.
“We added, Nik Bakos, Justin Macgregor, Jordan Knightly, Vinny Berti, Logan Gauvin on offense,” said Innamorato, “on defense we added Nick Kruczek and Jesse Gillis and in net we added Shayne O’Brien and Ryan Amarone.”
The Ice Owls, finished last season with a 15-5-1 record, but are looking for some production early on from one of their news players.
“Bakos is going to a huge addition to our offense,” said Innamorato, “our third line of Bakos Barnes and Knightly is going to score goals.”
They also have high expectations to build on what they accomplished last year.
“Our main goal is taking it game by game and we want to get a automatic bid to Nationals,” said Innamorato.
The Ice Owls have conference rival Farmingdale State University in a home and home series the first weekend of the season. Innamorato said that if they can sweep both of those games, there is no reason why they can’t be the first or second ranked team in the region when the first polls come out.
Last season the Ice Owls opened up with a scrimmage against their rivals the University of New Haven and the Chargers scored with less then one second left to tie the game and have the game end in a tie.
Even though the Ice Owls got their revenge beating the Chargers in the regular season when it counted, that game still sticks with the team.
This season the Ice Owls are opening up against the Chargers again, but this time the season opener counts.
“It’s real exciting, last year it was just a scrimmage but this year its 100% a real game” said Innamorato, “were not going to forget what happened last year.”
The Ice Owls open up the season on Monday, October 3 at the Lou Astorino Rink in Hamden. For more information go onto Facebook and look up their group called SCSU Ice Hockey 2011-2012.
