By Warren Kozireski
After a solid 15 conference win regular season and a fourth-place finish, Niagara earned the first-round playoff bye before being upset in the quarterfinals by an Army team motivated at least partially by their retiring longtime head coach.
After losing four of their top five scorers from last season to either graduation or the portal accounting for 54 of their second best in the conference 90 goals scored, the Purple Eagles will need find offense from different places and build locker room chemistry in a hurry with 14 returners and 11 new faces.
“I believe our staff did an awesome job in finding ways to bring talent to our campus…(but) I don’t know that answer to that yet,” head coach Jason Lammers said during the conference Media Day. “I think something we’ve always built our teams on is doing it by committee…and it will be built that way again this year.”
Senior forward Glebs Prohorenkovs is the top returning scorer with 31 points.
“Guys we’re excited about; I’ll start up front and one is (sophomore) Spencer Young, he’s a top returning guy for us and someone who had an awesome first year (seven goals, five assists). (Senior) Noah Hackett is a guy who has really matured through the program and, while he’s had to wait his turn, he put up some goals for us last year (11) and has some big, hairy, audacious goals for himself this year and (senior) Glebs Prohorenkovs played in the World Championships last year (for Latvia) and gained a wealth of experience from that and is someone we’re really counting on.”
It is on defense where the Purple Eagles are the most experienced with seniors Ethan Lund, Jonathan Ziskie and Mitchell Becker with graduate student Lane Brockhoff and junior Ross Roloson.
“On the back end we have (junior) Ross Roloson returning who was an important guy on our power play and special teams in general last year and (senior) Ethan Lund who we’re looking to take on more of a leadership role this year.”
Goaltending features the inexperienced trio of junior Mitchell Day and sophomore Deivs Rolov who combined to play in three games last season with freshman Thomas Anderson via the Bismarck Bobcats in the NAHL where he set the team record for wins while leading them to their first regular season title.
Niagara begins the campaign with six non-conference games beginning with St. Lawrence on home ice Oct. 4 before starting conference play with a home-and-home against Robert Morris Halloween weekend.
