PC Hockey Friars Determined to Snag an NCAA Bid This Season
Robert McMahon, Sports Columnist
PC Hockey Friars Determined to Snag an NCAA Bid This Season
There is renewed optimism on Eaton Street about this year’s Friar sextet. A significant roster overhaul in the off-season is likely to result in more wins. Early pre-season polls reflect this optimism. The United States College Hockey Organization (USCHO) has pegged the Friars as the #13th best team in the country in Division One. Hockey East’s pre-season poll ranks PC #3 in the 11-team league behind powerhouses Boston College and Boston University.
The Friars will travel this Saturday, October 5th, to Union College in Schenectady, NY, for an exhibition game to begin the season. Current Friar coach Nate Leaman coached the Union sextet for 8 seasons from 2003-11 and guided them to the NCAA tournament in 2011.
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Roster Need for 2024-25: Goal Scorers
The Friars failed to make the NCAA last year primarily because of their lack of scoring. The PC Friars scored a total of only 100 goals last year—their lowest total for a full season of play since 2012. Their average goal scoring for the prior 10 years of full season play (one season cut short by COVID) was 115 goals/year.
In Hockey East play, their inability to get the puck in the net last year was even more obvious. They led Hockey East in shots on goal by a wide margin. But only scored 66 goals against Hockey East league opponents, good for only 10th place in a league of 11 teams. Their leading point scorer, Nick Poisson with only 24 total points, was 38th in the league. A typical example of a frustrating Friar loss down the stretch last year was a game at Merrimack. The Friars had 47 shots on goal and lost 2-1.
Let’s take a look at the roster overhaul for this year’s edition of the skating Friars.
Roster Overhaul
A typical college hockey roster is ideally stacked with about the same number of players in the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes. Due to transfers, graduations, and early signings to the NHL, however, the PC roster last April going into this season had only 3 seniors, 2 juniors, and 6 sophomores returning. Coach Leaman and his staff pivoted quickly and recruited 8 graduate students and 9 freshmen, creating a somewhat unbalanced stack of classes, but a necessity to construct this year’s 28-man roster.
The number of graduate students includes 3 solid PC seniors from last year’s roster—forwards Nick Poisson and Chase Yoder and defenseman Connor Kelley—and 5 graduate transfers from other schools. Noteworthy new skaters among the graduate transfers are forwards Logan Will from Colorado College and Ryan O’Reilly from Arizona State and defenseman Carl Fish from Minnesota. Each of these grad student transfers received multiple offers from other hockey programs but decided to play for the Friars.
The 9-man freshman class, one of the largest in recent years for PC, has lots of talent with 7 forwards and 2 defensemen. College Hockey News recently rated PC’s freshman class as the 6th best in the country. The recruited PC freshman include 3 NHL 2024 draftees—Trevor Connelly (13th overall pick), John Mustard (#67th overall pick), and Logan Sawyer (#78th overall pick)—all talented forwards. Another freshman to keep an eye on is a 2021 NHL draftee, a native of Czechoslovakia, 6’4” defenseman Tomas Machu.
While it is tempting to be wowed by the apparent talent of this year’s PC freshmen group, the reality of Division One college hockey is that we should probably temper our optimism that this freshman group will have an immediate impact in the early part of the Friar schedule. The speed, skating ability, decision-making ability, and body strength of Division One players are much better than what most of the new freshmen skated against last year. So, at this point, we have to hope that some of the talented PC freshmen will acclimate quickly to Division One hockey and make a difference in several games for the Friars as the season progresses.
Forwards
Coach Leaman’s group of forwards this year provides the potential for PC to be a much better goal scoring team. This group will be led by PC graduate students Chase Yoder and Nick Poisson and feature returning PC sophomores Hudson Malinoski, Tanner Adams, and Graham Gamache; graduate student transfers Logan Will and Ryan O’Reilly; and likely new freshmen Trevor Connelly, John Mustard, and Logan Sawyer. This freshman threesome has the potential to become 15-20+ goal scorers/year in time for the Friars. In general, many of the new freshman bring more speed and 200’ skating ability to the Friars this year, according to Coach Leaman.
The new players not only potentially provide more scoring punch for the Friars, but they will also give Leaman the opportunity to use four forward lines, allowing all the forwards to have fresher legs later in games and later in the season.
Defensemen
The Friars return 3 solid PC defensemen in seniors Taige Harding and Guillaume Richard and in graduate student Connor Kelley. Sophomore Andrew Centrella and junior Austen May will be joined by graduate transfer Carl Fish to form a core group of 6 hard-nosed savvy defensemen-first defenders who are also skilled shot blockers. Freshman Tomas Machu will likely challenge them for playing time. Coach Leaman will be experimenting for a few games to figure out the best defensemen to skate on the power play, though junior Austen May who had 4 goals last year, is likely to see a lot of time on the power play.
Goalie
Philip Svedbeck is PC’s #1 goalie and his overall 2.32 goals-against average last year was pretty remarkable. In Hockey East play, Svedebeck had a comparable 2.35 goals-against average. However, he was only the 6th best goalie in Hockey East in terms of save %, as his save % was .899. Hockey East had some of the best goalies in the country. Eleven other goalies in Hockey East last year had a save % of .900 or above. Svedebeck had a 11-9-4 record in Hockey East play. That relatively modest record isn’t all on Svedebeck, of course. The lack of goal support was a big factor, and the grind of playing 99.9% of every minute of play last year was also a factor.
Coach Leaman, however, would like to see Svedbeck’s save % increase to at least .910 to .920. Perhaps PC’s more seasoned blueliners this year will provide Svedbeck with better protection and might enable that to happen. And perhaps graduate transfer Zach Borgiel from Merrimack will emerge to give Svedbeck some time off, though his numbers at Merrimack were modest at best. PC, however, may have to live with a Svedbeck’s .900 save % and simply score more goals to win more games.
While PC has recruited both freshmen and graduate player talent for the upcoming season, the Friars will be hard-pressed to challenge Boston College and Boston University at the top of Hockey East. Both of those teams are as good, if not better, than last year’s editions. It will also take some time for Coach Leaman to integrate the new players into the desired shifts and to put together the best power play group and penalty kill group.
Nevertheless, PC looks stronger than last year, and if goalie Svedbeck stays healthy, the Friars will battle Maine for the #3 ranking in Hockey East at the end of the year with a potential number of regular-season wins at 21 or 22 before Hockey East playoffs.
Hats off to PC graduate students Poisson, Yoder, and Kelley for returning for another year with the Friars. Last year’s late season swoon left a sour taste in their mouths. Any of those skaters could have transferred to any team in the country, or simply began their professional careers. They didn’t look for greener pastures. Instead, they decided to stay at PC and lead the Friars back into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2019. Their leadership and determination will be a big factor on and off the ice this upcoming season