Photo by: Maddie McCall
New Look Men’s Ice Hockey Ready to Open Season
10/2/2024 3:45:00 PM | Men's Ice Hockey
Pios in action for pair of exhibition contests this weekend
FAIRFIED, Conn. (October 2, 2024) – It will be a lot of new faces on the ice for the Sacred Heart University men's ice hockey team as the 2024-25 season opens up this month. The team's 30-man roster includes 10 incoming first-year players, plus eight inbound transfers, which means just 12 Pios return to the fold from last year's squad.
How, then, do you prevent them all from feeling like strangers to each other with only a month of ice time ahead of this weekend's exhibition contests? The work started in earnest over the summer.
"The grad guys came here this summer, our returning players stayed here this summer; we had a lot of guys that stayed here and trained together, did things socially together, and just got to know each other," said head coach C.J. Marottolo three days ahead of the team's first competition Saturday at Merrimack. "A lot of the stuff that you usually do in the first week of September? That was already done."
The summer bonding has allowed Marottolo and his staff to simply get down to the business of hockey during the team's preseason camp. Coach credits his returning leadership with the successful integration of so many new faces to the SHU Hockey family.
"The new guys who came in and the guys who didn't stay this summer, the leaders who were here assimilated those new guys in, and I think it's been really good so far," added Marottolo. "I give a lot of the credit, or most of the credit, maybe all of the credit [laughs], to [returning leaders] Hunter Sansbury and John Jaworski. They have done a great job getting the group together and creating a standard of how we do things on and off the ice."
While Marottolo alluded to some to-be-expected challenges getting so many new bodies acclimated to the team's system, he has been very impressed with the work level and compete level throughout the preseason.
"I don't know how many practices we've had, but I think every practice except one has been where we needed it to be," noted Marottolo. "The thing that's really stood out is they compete; they are battling every single day. Not unlike many schools, we have a lot of small games, and we keep score; there's a winner and loser every day, and that creates the type of mentality we need. Our practices has been hard, and they've gotten after it."
The coaching staff will get the first look at their team against outside competition with a pair of exhibition games on the docket this weekend. SHU will play at Merrimack at 4 p.m. on Saturday, before returning home to square off with Simon Fraser on Sunday, in a 4 p.m. puck drop at Martire Family Arena, which will be open to the public and free admission. After a month of practice against each other, everybody is ready to face a different foe.
"I think we're still getting to know everybody a little bit, and obviously we haven't played anybody but ourselves," continued Marottolo. "This weekend, we'll be able to evaluate our guys against another color jersey, which is always good."
Following the exhibition weekend, the Pios have stern non-conference tests against Colgate and Massachusetts, before diving headlong into a 26-game Atlantic Hockey schedule which begins the final week of October and is not for the faint of heart. The league is competitive nearly from top to bottom, as evidenced by five different schools receiving at least one first-place vote in September's Preseason Coaches' Poll.
"There's extreme parity in our league and any of those teams could have been voted number one; it's a hard league, it's a good league," opined Marottolo. "There are really good players in our league and every game is tight. What tips the scales every game is something a little bit different, there's small margins. It's going to be a very tight league."
With little things and attention to detail likely to be the determining factor in so many games, the Pioneers are trying to set the tone in preseason practice and focus in on doing those things from the get-go.
"There are two areas that we've talked about; there's been more of an effort, an emphasis, on getting to the net without the puck," said Marottolo. "And, at the end of the day, you've got to keep pucks out of your net to be successful, and we're hopefully going to make it harder for people to get to our net. Net-front presence, both sides."
With a lot of eager new faces and a high compete level in practice, plus SHU being named as the preseason favorite in Atlantic Hockey, it will be easy for those watching the program from outside to set lofty goals for the 2024-25 edition of the Pios. What are the team's own goals? They're going to keep those in the room for now.
"There are some goals we have that we're going to keep internally with our group, that we talk about every day," concluded Marottolo. "I will say this group has high expectations. They're really excited to get going, I think this group really likes each other; there's a good vibe. We just want to be the best that we can be at the end of the day, and we're going to work hard to achieve that."
SHU opens its 32nd varsity season on Oct. 11-12 with a two-game series at Colgate.
How, then, do you prevent them all from feeling like strangers to each other with only a month of ice time ahead of this weekend's exhibition contests? The work started in earnest over the summer.
"The grad guys came here this summer, our returning players stayed here this summer; we had a lot of guys that stayed here and trained together, did things socially together, and just got to know each other," said head coach C.J. Marottolo three days ahead of the team's first competition Saturday at Merrimack. "A lot of the stuff that you usually do in the first week of September? That was already done."
The summer bonding has allowed Marottolo and his staff to simply get down to the business of hockey during the team's preseason camp. Coach credits his returning leadership with the successful integration of so many new faces to the SHU Hockey family.
"The new guys who came in and the guys who didn't stay this summer, the leaders who were here assimilated those new guys in, and I think it's been really good so far," added Marottolo. "I give a lot of the credit, or most of the credit, maybe all of the credit [laughs], to [returning leaders] Hunter Sansbury and John Jaworski. They have done a great job getting the group together and creating a standard of how we do things on and off the ice."
While Marottolo alluded to some to-be-expected challenges getting so many new bodies acclimated to the team's system, he has been very impressed with the work level and compete level throughout the preseason.
"I don't know how many practices we've had, but I think every practice except one has been where we needed it to be," noted Marottolo. "The thing that's really stood out is they compete; they are battling every single day. Not unlike many schools, we have a lot of small games, and we keep score; there's a winner and loser every day, and that creates the type of mentality we need. Our practices has been hard, and they've gotten after it."
The coaching staff will get the first look at their team against outside competition with a pair of exhibition games on the docket this weekend. SHU will play at Merrimack at 4 p.m. on Saturday, before returning home to square off with Simon Fraser on Sunday, in a 4 p.m. puck drop at Martire Family Arena, which will be open to the public and free admission. After a month of practice against each other, everybody is ready to face a different foe.
"I think we're still getting to know everybody a little bit, and obviously we haven't played anybody but ourselves," continued Marottolo. "This weekend, we'll be able to evaluate our guys against another color jersey, which is always good."
Following the exhibition weekend, the Pios have stern non-conference tests against Colgate and Massachusetts, before diving headlong into a 26-game Atlantic Hockey schedule which begins the final week of October and is not for the faint of heart. The league is competitive nearly from top to bottom, as evidenced by five different schools receiving at least one first-place vote in September's Preseason Coaches' Poll.
"There's extreme parity in our league and any of those teams could have been voted number one; it's a hard league, it's a good league," opined Marottolo. "There are really good players in our league and every game is tight. What tips the scales every game is something a little bit different, there's small margins. It's going to be a very tight league."
With little things and attention to detail likely to be the determining factor in so many games, the Pioneers are trying to set the tone in preseason practice and focus in on doing those things from the get-go.
"There are two areas that we've talked about; there's been more of an effort, an emphasis, on getting to the net without the puck," said Marottolo. "And, at the end of the day, you've got to keep pucks out of your net to be successful, and we're hopefully going to make it harder for people to get to our net. Net-front presence, both sides."
With a lot of eager new faces and a high compete level in practice, plus SHU being named as the preseason favorite in Atlantic Hockey, it will be easy for those watching the program from outside to set lofty goals for the 2024-25 edition of the Pios. What are the team's own goals? They're going to keep those in the room for now.
"There are some goals we have that we're going to keep internally with our group, that we talk about every day," concluded Marottolo. "I will say this group has high expectations. They're really excited to get going, I think this group really likes each other; there's a good vibe. We just want to be the best that we can be at the end of the day, and we're going to work hard to achieve that."
SHU opens its 32nd varsity season on Oct. 11-12 with a two-game series at Colgate.
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