Dartmouth Men's Hockey: 2016-17 Season Preview

10/21/2016 1:36:00 PM | Men's Ice Hockey

By: Dartmouth

HANOVER, N.H. – The Dartmouth men's hockey team officially begins its 111th season next weekend against Michigan, but the first test of outside competition comes Saturday, Oct. 22 against Harvard in a preseason scrimmage.

Admission to the 4 p.m. game at Thompson is free and open to all fans.

The Big Green are coming off a trip to Lake Placid and the 2016 ECAC Hockey Semifinals, while Harvard also fell to top-seeded and eventual national runner-up Quinnipiac in the conference championship game at the Olympic Center.

SEASON PREVIEW:
To say things look different around the underbelly of Thompson Arena this fall is, safe to say, an understatement.

For the better part of the last two months, the familiar faces of the guys who run the rink have been replaced by those subcontracted out by the school. Skates were replaced by work boots and the sound of coaches' whistles were gone only to have the silence broken by drills.

The new locker room project has been moving along and appears to be on track to have the team in their newly expanded room just in time for Michigan to come to town for the first time.

Perhaps this is the perfect year for this project that head coach Bob Gaudet has been planning in his mind for many years and on paper for the last several. This is one of those year's in Dartmouth's recruiting cycle that brings to Hanover and Thompson Arena a wealth of new talent.

In all, 11 new names grace the roster of the 2016-17 installment of the Big Green. Incredibly and despite that massive amount of youthful injection this fall, Dartmouth boasts only the fourth-largest rookie class amongst the nation's 60 Division I teams behind Miami (14), AIC and BC (13).

However, as the Green inch closer and closer to dropping the puck on 2016-17 and the thought of facing the powerful Wolverines on their home ice, let us not forget that Michigan also carries 11 newcomers on their roster as well.

Picked to lead the Big Green this fall is perhaps one of the most underrated players in terms of what he brings to the table in all of New England and ECAC Hockey. Junior Carl Hesler '18 is tasked with not only leading a team of four seniors who have been here longer, but one that also has a combined 17 underclassmen.

Hesler is not going to win the Hobey Baker. That's not a knock on him and his ability. But that trophy is about gaudy point totals, flashy goals and dazzling highlights. Hesler is a blue-collar, put-your-head-down-and-work-guy. He shows up, he plays hard and, on most nights, the Boxborough, Massachusetts, native makes a difference, whether on the scoresheet or in the way he gets the most from his teammates.

He won't have to lead alone, though. Seniors Grant Opperman and Josh Hartley will don the 'A' of alternate captains this year, themselves bringing different types of games to the table at different ends of the ice. Hartley is a big defenseman, who can level opposing forwards with open-ice hits or rub someone out against the wall. Opperman is an opportunistic forward, who oftentimes finds himself in the right place at the right moment to make his linemates look like geniuses.

Kyle Nickerson and Troy Crema round out the Class of 2017 with Brandon Kirk opting to serve in a student-coach capacity due to an injury that has plagued his career since coming to Hanover three years ago. Nickerson and Crema are similar in stature, but are opposites on the ice. Crema is speed and flash, while Nickerson is a grinder who is more of a straight-ahead player to Crema's zigging and zagging.

The juniors are made up of two defensemen (River Rymsha and Tim Shoup), a trio of forwards (Corey Kalk and Kevin Neiley), including Hesler, and goaltender Devin Buffalo. Biding his time behind James Kruger '16 and Charles Grant '16 the last two years, Buffalo has been nothing but the consummate teammate, doing everything asked of him and stepping into big roles when called upon.

Buffalo's first career start came last season in Michigan at Yost Arena on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. A tall task for any goalie was made even tougher by the fact that the Big Green were dropped by a 7-0 defeat the night before. To make matters worse, Wolverine fans were none too pleased by the fact that Ohio State had claimed a 42-13 win in the Big House next door earlier that afternoon and were ready to take out their frustration on Buffalo and his teammates.

They did not get their wish.

In one of the most amazing single-game performances by a Dartmouth player in recent memory, the Alberta native reached deep and came away with a 37-save performance that helped Dartmouth to a 1-1 tie following a late goal from the home team. Buffalo would go on to pick up his first career win the following weekend on the road against a Rensselaer team that had previously been unbeaten in ECAC Hockey play. Grant would come on strong in the second half of the season and never relinquish the starter's role, but Buffalo had seen enough for fans of the Green and White to feel comfortable with him in the crease this season.

A pair of newcomers in freshmen goalies Adrian Clark and Dean Shatzer will challenge him for ice time as the duo brings a wealth of talent and juniors experience to Division I hockey.

If it took Buffalo until his second season to make a splash, the Class of 2019 wasted little time in making their presence felt as freshmen last year. Now sophomores, this group grew up quickly with an incredible amount of clutch scoring at just the right time.

Look at the unforgettable sweep of Yale in New Haven during the ECAC Hockey Quarterfinals that propelled Dartmouth to Lake Placid last March. Who scored the game-winning goals in each of the two victories? Connor Yau in overtime of Game 1 and Kevan Kilistoff midway through the second period the following night to cap the sweep. Alex Jasiek — scorer of the tennis-ball goal against Princeton — picked up the first assist on Yau's OT winner, while John Ernsting was the one who made the pass to set up Tim O'Brien's double-overtime winner in Game 3 of the first-round series to eliminate Colgate. All the while, Cameron Roth was a stalwart of defense down the stretch after illness kept him out of the lineup for long portions of the first half of the season. Karan Toor was playing in the role Roth would fill later on before an injury sidelined him for the remainder of the year.

Now you add that group of battle-tested veterans to a group of rookies that has the coaching staff excited and you've got a recipe to turn some heads and surprise those who picked this team to finish ninth in both preseason polls.

The 11 members of the freshman class stand, on average, at 6-foot-1 and boast an average weight north of 180 pounds. They represent six US states with two from Colorado (Shatzer and Will Graber), Massachusetts (Ben DiMaio and Charley Michalowski) and Illinois (Ryan Blankemeir and Daniel Warpecha) and another two from Ontario (Jamie McLaughlin and Clark). Cam Strong is the first player ever to suit up for the Big Green having grown up in Montana, while Shane Sellar and Clay Han represent Big Ten territory as they call Pennsylvania and Ohio their respective home states.

The group is a mix of the two goalies, a pair of blueliners and seven forwards.

As demonstrated by the preseason polls, many people think Dartmouth's run to the mecca of American hockey and the subsequent graduation of 10 players was its swansong for a few years as the program is once again rebuilding with such a large incoming class.

Those people made their judgments looking at the numbers of who is gone and not the talent and experience of what remains. They see who scored the OT goal, not the player who dug the puck out from along the halfboards to win the battle and make the centering pass. Or the player who beat out the icing and then hit the goal scorer in stride.

The result is important, but the means by which it is achieved cannot be overlooked when assessing value.

In that regard, this team, this year, is shaping up to be just fine.