It was a tale of two seasons for the Oswego State men’s hockey team during its 2019-2020 campaign, which ended Saturday with a 4-1 loss against SUNY Geneseo in the SUNYAC Championship. 

The season began earlier than normal, players came back in August to go to Europe at the end of the month, with games in Italy and Switzerland. Just a few months later, Oswego State won both exhibition games in October. The Lakers started the season on a four-game winning streak. All seemed to be going well. 

But then the game at SUNY Geneseo on Nov. 16 happened. Three game misconducts, a match misconduct and over 80 penalty minutes all came together for a 9-1 loss. Quickly, the season’s outlook changed.

“You start the regular season off 4-0 and you’re feeling pretty good about yourself,” Oswego State head coach Ed Gosek said. “We weren’t playing defensively as well as we should’ve been. That, against some better teams, started to creep in and catch up with us.”

A streak of losses against nationally-ranked opponents began following the loss to the Knights. A loss to then-No. 4 Hobart College the next weekend and then-No. 7 Salve Regina University the weekend after that.

In December, Oswego State had three wins, including two league wins over Buffalo State and SUNY Fredonia, but that was followed by four one-goal losses; two of which were against ranked opponents, the University of New England and Utica College.

“That’s the importance of each and every game. It’s a good reminder for our players, our returners, our staff,” Gosek said. “Had we tied some of those or found a way to get it done, we’d still be playing, and we’d be in the tournament despite losing to Geneseo down the stretch.”

A few games later came a 3-2 overtime loss to SUNY Cortland on the road. Then, Gosek and the coaching staff realized some changes needed to be made. After that week, Gosek said the players had started to really take ownership of how they needed to play to be successful.

Players like Michael Gillespie, Josh Zizek and Alex DiCarlo, started to step up and find the back of the net, playing with a desire to extend their season. In the next four games, which included three wins and a tie, Gillespie had 12 points. 

But the biggest change that came around was in the crease. Steven Kozikoski, who had only seen action in the exhibition games, played his first collegiate game against SUNY Canton. The sophomore did not see much action in the game, stopping 19 saves of the 21 shots he faced.

After giving David Richer and Cedric Hansen numerous opportunities to take a hold on the starting job, “it just never really happened,” Gosek said. 

“If I would’ve told people at the beginning of the year that Kozikoski was going to start against Plattsburgh and Geneseo, people would’ve thought, ‘The heck is he thinking?” Gosek said. “Like everyone else, we were pleasantly surprised.”

Following the start of the Kozikoski era, Oswego State went 7-1-1, tying a tough The College at Brockport team, as well as falling to SUNY Geneseo in a tough battle. Richer played against SUNY Fredonia for the team’s Senior Night and the second game of the Morrisville State weekend series.

A semifinal win against Plattsburgh State and then falling to SUNY Geneseo in a 4-1 heartbreaker ended the Lakers’ season last Saturday; a season that Gosek said he has never seen in his 17 years as a head coach. It was a season that just was not good enough for the NCAA tournament.

“We were [consistently] inconsistent up until the end of the year,” Gosek said. “I can’t say that the last 10, 11 games. We were playing good hockey. Up to that point, we were just inconsistent.”

Inconsistency is the primary focus for Gosek and the coaching staff, as they try to replace the 13 seniors that are graduating in May. After the loss to SUNY Geneseo in the championship, Gosek said, “It’s all about trying to get better.”

“Some [seniors] rose to the occasion and continued to push and get better. Some others, their level of play was stagnant,” Gosek said. “I don’t know if there was a big sense of urgency until the end.”

The Lakers are returning some key scoring, like DiCarlo and Travis Broughman. While not as prominent as those two, defensive scorer Max Novick is a senior next year and will look to extend his career as long as possible.

DiCarlo’s scoring really came to fruition following the holiday break, when he was able to get his footing in his first year of college hockey. Broughman, who had 27 points on the season, had been a key part throughout the season, who Gosek said is a dominant player when he wants to be, but “where is that every game?”

“Those are the athletes that have the ability to distinguish themselves and then separate themselves from others,” Gosek said. 

A season that was filled with adversity on the ice, as well as off the ice—including family deaths and other hardships—is now over. While every team has hardships, Oswego State “had more than their share this year,” Gosek said. 

“You’d get over one thing and move forward, then there’d be something else. It was consistent,” Gosek said. “To say that it didn’t affect our performance would be lying.”

Now begins the offseason of trying to simply get better. Gosek will have to try to replace players like Zizek, Gillespie and Anthony Passero. At this time of the year, it is a final push to get players to commit to Oswego State that are not only good players, but good people, according to Gosek. The team has a “strong group of athletes” they are recruiting. 

This new class will need to replace two goaltenders, strong forwards, eight to be exact, and three defensemen. It will be a class, and a team, that will have a different attitude with such a young team and will have something to prove, which is exciting, Gosek alluded to.

As of Thursday, Oswego State has three players officially committed to its roster for the 2020-2021 season. Two defensemen have put on Twitter that they are coming to the Lakers. Tristan Francis, from Cumberland, Ontario, Canada, played for the Navan Grads of the Central Canada Hockey League. He had 38 points in 62 games as of Thursday. Ryan Eccles from Syracuse is coming from the Albany Academy. He is a solid body, standing at 6-foot-1 and 201 pounds. 

Looking to replace some high-scoring forwards, the Lakers bring in Conor Smart, who is from the Ottawa Jr. Senators in the CCHL. He has a strong wrist shot that might complement a player like Travis Broughman. He has 32 points in 61 games as of Thursday. In a highlight reel video, Smart said he likes to replicate his play after Johnny Gaudreau from the National Hockey League, who is a “smaller guy with good, fast hands,” Smart mentioned in the video. 

“We’ll work hard to try to bring in players that we can develop and represent our program the right way, who also have some talent to keep us in the hunt next year,” Gosek said. “With our program and our expectation, we didn’t meet them. We got to the championship game but didn’t win our league. We didn’t make the NCAA tournament … I’ve never settled for second place.”

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Photo by Nicole Hube | The Oswegonian