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Photo: Mark Selders/Penn State Athletics
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Sources close to former Icers forward Josh Daley have informed TYT that he has elected to transfer to Division III Wisconsin-Stevens Point for the 2012-2013 season.
Daley, a Pittsburgh native, arrived at Penn State last season after a successful Canadian Junior A career that included 23 goals with the SJHL's Battlefords North Stars in 2009-2010 and 31 more in a 2010-2011 season split between the MJHL's Dauphin Kings and Waywayseecappo Wolverines. With a highlight reel like this, he was definitely one of the more anticipated recruits for 2011:
He started off well enough, with a pair of goals in PSU's season-opening destruction of Lebanon Valley College. Then...not a whole lot. He played in 10 games after that, none of which were at the ACHA National Tournament, scoring two more times and adding two assists. Even within those 11 total games, he was largely used as a fourth-liner or a spare forward. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, he was left off of the list of Icers making the jump to the DI team in April. I suppose it could be said that of the 11 who will be on the Nittany Lions this fall, only four (Matt Madrazo, Jake Friedman, Mike McDonagh and Pete Sweetland) were not Guy Gadowsky recruits or rising seniors, so perhaps the odds were against Daley from day one.
His new school, Stevens Point, was once the dominant program in DIII, winning four national championships in five seasons from 1988-1993 and adding runner-up finishes in 1992 and 1998. While the Pointers haven't come close to those heights in recent seasons, second year coach Chris Brooks put a stop to UWSP's first streak of consecutive losing seasons since the mid-1980s in 2011-2012. He'll look to 19 returning players (including forward Kyle Heck, who scored 23 percent of the team's goals last year) - and one notable new one - to continue to rebuild the program.
Daley joins goaltender Tim Carr in departing from PSU to a Division III program. Carr joined Western New England in the middle of last season and put up team-leading goals against (2.49) and save percentage (0.928) numbers over his seven games. Forwards Tim Acker, Dan Meiselman, Dominic Morrone and Forrest Dell as well as defensemen Ryan Seibolt, Steve Edgeworth and Brandon Russo remain among the 2011-2012 Icers with unknown plans for next year.
I believe Edgeworth is permanently injured, or so he said on Twitter. Also, according to twitter, he's dating women's lacrosse superstar Tatum Coffey, so he's got that going for him, which is nice.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why Daley didn't fit into Gadowsky's long-term plans but Daley doesn't seem all that bitter about it. Good luck to him at UWSP.
Yeah, I don't think I saw that specific tweet, but that was the sense I got, that he likes it at PSU and is "retired."
ReplyDeleteI'm still hoping a couple of those guys become Ice Lions. Mac Winchester and Joe Zitarelli, casualties of the first transition offseason, were huge parts of their success this past year. There are definitely worse things to do than play for a well-run, competitive D2 team.