It’s the opening weekend of the college hockey season and the Lake Superior State Lakers are preparing for a pair of non-conference games to begin the year.
Coming off its best season in over 20 years, the Lakers begin play with a pair of non-conference games against Merrimack, beginning on Saturday night.
For Lakers coach Damon Whitten, the school wants to build on a season that saw the program go 23-13-2 overall, which included a record of 16-10-2 in Western Collegiate Hockey Association action.
“We talk a little bit more about our daily approach and the standards we expect out of our players on a day-to-day basis,” Whitten said. “We’re coming off a strong season with 23 wins and we want to eclipse that. We want to be better than that.”
Improving on last season doesn’t come without some challenges.
The Lakers enter the year having lost some key pieces from last season as forwards Diego Cuglietta, Anthony Nellis, and Gage Torrel have all moved on.
Cuglietta had 25 goals last season to lead the Lakers and finished the year with 41 points, also tops on the team.
“We’ll look to some seniors to replace those guys and step up their production,” Whitten said.
The team will look to veteran forward Max Humitz to take another step offensively this season.
Humitz set a career-high last season with 16 goals and his 42 career goals are tied for third-most among all college hockey players heading into this season.
“The plan is not to fall off offensively,” Whitten said. “We were one of the highest-scoring teams in the country and we’d like to maintain that. That’s a question mark because of some of the years guys had that graduated but we’d still like to be a highly-skilled, fast-paced, puck-possession team. That’s going to be our brand.”
“We’re not going to change who we are based on our losses,” Whitten added.
With an experienced group of defencemen returning, Whitten expects to be “really strong from the back end out and look to that to establish us early on.”
“We return over 350 games played on our back end which, in college hockey is quite a bit of experience,” Whitten also said. “That, paired with Mareks Mittens (in goal), who has got a lot of experience over the last couple of years, we’re going to lean on them early on and see where the offence shakes out.”
One of those defencemen is senior Collin Saccoman, who has earned the praise of his coach.
“He’s one of the highest-scoring defencemen in the country and he’s also right up there in blocked shots,” Whitten said. “He’s a real glue guy that’s instrumental in our success.”
Puck drop for Saturday’s opener is 7 p.m. at Taffy Abel Arena.
Merrimack is coached by former Laker coach Scott Borek.