A shot to win this year’s SUNYAC Ice Hockey Championships has already begun, but for the No. 2 Oswego State men’s hockey team, this quest runs through Oswego and begins Saturday at the Marano Campus Center Ice Arena against the Buffalo State Bengals.
This year’s senior class is preparing for their final shot to help bring home another SUNYAC title. All but two of the active seniors in this class were a part of the last SUNYAC Championship winning team in 2014. Sean Federow and Joey Davies were the two seniors that were not on that team in 2014 and are trying to etch their name into immortality for the first time.
Oswego State has been on top of the SUNYAC for the duration of the regular season and earned a bye into the semifinal round of playoffs. But the steps the team took to improve on last season’s finish did not make for an easy path to follow. According to head coach Ed Gosek, it all started before the season got underway.
“Preseason, leading up to [the season], it all starts there really with the attitude part and making sure we were on the same page,” Gosek said
Each player knew from day one what was going to change to erase the memory of last year’s 14-11-2 overall record.
“Right from the get-go it was all business,” senior captain Chris Raguseo said. “The coaching staff, they laid out everything for us as a team and as individuals what they expected from us and what was going to fly and what wasn’t going to be tolerated.”
Gosek shouldered the blame for last season’s failures, but he realized that the program’s prior accomplishments should not let his current focus and style be affected. He preaches hard work and playing the game the right way and that is exactly what he demands from his players.
“It starts with our recommitment to our work ethic or recommitment attitude and being good teammates first and foremost over being good hockey players,” Gosek said. “So, that’s where we had to start with, that we wanted to win games by outworking teams and not having more talent than teams.”
However, it was not going to be easy to get each player on board with this refocused approach. This was especially true for the group of seniors who had to adjust in their final season.
“They’re not kids, they’re 24, 25-year-old seniors,” Gosek said. “They’re young men and to have a coach be hard on you, especially after my shortcomings of not being hard enough last year on them, to now flip it back around. We told them it’s going to be a change. It’s going to be hard for you accept that after I allowed you, it’s no one’s fault but mine, to allow things to creep in that aren’t in our best interest last year.”
Gosek said there was not a day that went by over the summer where he and his assistant coaches were not working on fixing the 2015-2016 season’s pitfalls.
The Lakers started the regular season sweeping the weekend against Elmira College with 7-1 and 6-3 wins, slowly working their way up the rankings. They earned another two victories once conference play got underway with a 5-1 win over the College at Brockport and a 5-3 comeback win over No. 4 SUNY Geneseo and jumped up the rankings some more.
Oswego State won three more games and was the last remaining team without a loss or tie in the nation. With that, on Nov. 28 when both national polls were released, Oswego State was the No. 1 team Div. III hockey.
“I think early on we started to see just the type of people we had in that room,” Raguseo said. “Obviously you come to this program to succeed and to be the best in the country each and every year. Especially after last season, the coaching staff brought in the right guys and we were able to find what we needed to find early on. I think once we got a few games under our belt, we quickly realized we got something going here.”
The changes made in the offseason would not have been successful without the leadership from the senior class and Gosek said the standards that were presented to them have been upheld throughout the season.
“The seniors have been open to that and they want to be pushed,” Gosek said. “It’s not the opposite.”
Gosek also voiced comparisons in terms of effort and attitude to the first team in Oswego State men’s ice hockey program history to win a national title.
“The 2007 team, they had a similar attitude that they were going to earn it,” Gosek said. “We had a lot of adversity that year. Things weren’t always rosy that year and yet they battled through it.”
Even though the road to the Frozen Four is not on the players’ minds, the thoughts of ending this season, and Laker careers for the 12 active seniors, with a positive outcome is what everyone inside the Oswego State dressing room is envisioning.
“For a lot of these guys this is it and everything you kind of put into your entire career, and I’m not just talking about four years here,” Raguseo said. “I’m talking for the 20 years that I’ve been skating and I can speak for a lot of the other guys, too. It’s a real eye opener. We want to go out on a good note, that’s for sure.”
