The Oswego club hockey team kicked off its season with a trip to West Virginia this past weekend for two nonconference games. The Lakers split the two-game set with the Mountaineers. The seven hour bus trip helped the team immensely to develop important chemistry moving forward.
“Before this weekend our chemistry was good and we were ready to play,” junior goaltender Jimmy Albright said. “Then after this weekend with the long bus ride, we got to know each other better and had a lot of fun. I think it’s stronger now than it was all of last year.”
Typical first game nervousness kicked in, but the Lakers stayed confident and played to their strengths winning the first game of the year 4-2 backed by Albright’s performance in between the pipes, stopping 43 of 45 shots.
“At first we were a little anxious to see how it was going to go because everyone is pretty young and not a lot of guys have played together,” Albright said.
Despite a plethora of young players on the roster for the 2015-2016 season, the Lakers are as confident as ever and Albright believes they have very good reason to be.
“We are at least getting to the finals or winning it,” Albright said. “We have more games this year and we will be well over .500.”
The Lakers feel like they can improve on their 7-7-1 record from last season and make a deep run in the playoffs even with all of their young talent. The Lakers lost in the first round of playoffs last year to the University at Buffalo and want to better their performance this season by playing to their strengths.
“We’re the kind of team that needs to get the puck in and grind,” Albright said. “We aren’t going to be a pretty team that has sweet-passing plays through the neutral zone.”
The team enjoyed some publicity last weekend when a goal by Kegan Storjohann on Friday Sept. 25 was featured on TSN, Canada’s premier sports network, among other media outlets. Storjohann was taken down on the way to the net but stayed on his knees, only to roof the puck over the Mountaineer netminder’s shoulder.
The Lakers play again this weekend at Canisius College Saturday at 9 p.m. and then Sunday at Mercyhurst University at 7 p.m. as part of the annual Laker Showdown. The Lakers will return home for their home opener on October 10 against SUNY Cortland at 7:35 p.m. at the Marano Campus Center Arena.