The Future Begins Today

Pegula Ice Arena: The mansion on the hill

Tonight, at 8:00 p.m., Penn State's NCAA men's hockey team will face off against Army at Pegula Ice Arena, their opening game in the glittering $90 million facility due on campus for roughly 100 years. It will kick off the second season of the modern varsity era for the Nittany Lions, after a first memorable for a level of competitiveness well beyond what even the most optimistic observers expected.

The NCAA women's season already got off to a rousing start last weekend, with a tie and a win at Vermont fueled largely by the exploits of an outstanding freshman class. While the men battle Army, Josh Brandwene's squad will be in Hamden, CT to take on Quinnipiac, with a rematch to follow tomorrow afternoon.

On this historic day, it's impossible to avoid a peek back to where things stood back in the fall of 2010, the beginning for both this blog and the transition of Penn State's storied ACHA Division 1 teams to NCAA status.

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Back then, Pegula Ice Arena and varsity status were but blips on the horizon - noticeably out there and worthy of excitement, but with little tangible effect on the 2010-11 hockey season. The Icers struggled and finally emerged with a late charge to qualify for an unprecedented 20th consecutive ACHA National Tournament, although a first-round loss to Rhode Island made it a short trip. On the women's side, the Lady Icers saw a promising season fall short of nationals when the pollsters punished the team - unfairly, in my opinion - for the fact that both of its goalies went to Erzurum, Turkey in the middle of the season to represent the ACHA and USA Hockey at the 2011 World University Games.

Once that first season wound down, it didn't take long for the developments to barrel in with enough pace to run together into a blur of progress. The arena was officially named and renderings were made public in January 2011. The Big Ten finally ended the speculation and adopted men's hockey for this season that March. A month after that, Guy Gadowsky was hired and brought assistants Keith Fisher and Matt Lindsay with him. Former Icers player and assistant coach Bill Downey took on the men's hockey operations role in July after serving in the same position at Harvard. The women's coaching situation was addressed as well that summer with former Icers captain Josh Brandwene, who had gone on to great success leading ACHA and prep school programs. Brandwene moved quickly to bring in former Boston University star Gina Kearns as an assistant coach, while Casey McCullion came on board one year later.

Tommy Olczyk scores as a freshman in 2011-12 against Rhode Island

Recruits brought in specifically for NCAA hockey started to make their way to Penn State as well. Tommy Olczyk and Division I transfers Nate Jensen, Taylor Holstrom, Bryce Johnson and Justin Kirchhevel all arrived in the fall of 2011, while women's players Taylor Gross and Jess Desorcie followed at the semester break.

Through it all, the 2011-12 season presented an awkward backdrop: eventual NCAA coaches Gadowsky and Brandwene steering the Icers and Lady Icers through their final ACHA Division 1 seasons, which doubled as an extended varsity hockey tryout for many. The women won the ECWHL regular season title but again fell short of nationals - and again, in an act of questionable collective judgment - when they were rated by their brutally tough NCAA-laden schedule and not by wins over eventual national champion Northeastern and Massachusetts, a team that wound up with what should have been PSU's tournament bid.

The Icers, predictably, dominated ACHA competition for much of the year - an 11-0 trouncing at two-time national champ Illinois standing out in that department - with Olczyk, Holstrom and Kirchhevel leading the way. However, PSU seemed to weaken a bit down the stretch, as a November loss at Delaware was later joined by a shootout shocker against Central Oklahoma, and a pair of miraculous comebacks were required to beat Oklahoma. The latter of the two came during the ACHA National Tournament quarterfinals in Strongsville, OH, but it wound up being for naught as Oakland closed the Icers era in stunning fashion the next day in the semifinals.

That one hurt, more than any other loss during TYT's existence. I desperately wanted one last ACHA national championship on the way out the door.

On a more positive note, Penn State was able to participate in an outdoor game in Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park against NCAA Division III Neumann on January 4, 2012. While the contest went to the Knights, it was certainly an unprecedented experience that won't soon be forgotten. Construction on Pegula Ice Arena began about six weeks after that, and the site near the corner of Curtin Rd. and University Dr. became the focus for a great deal of attention all the way through today.

Potent scorers like Shannon Yoxheimer have the Nittany Lion women poised for big things

In hindsight, 2012-13 was a much more "normal" season than many anticipated on the women's side. While still playing out of the Greenberg Ice Pavilion, the Lady Icers Nittany Lions were full-fledged members of NCAA Division I and College Hockey America, a conference that includes perennial power Mercyhurst, Robert Morris, RIT, Lindenwood and Syracuse. Following a shocking 5-3 win at Vermont for a first NCAA win in the program's first NCAA game, PSU fell back to earth a bit, finishing 7-26-2 and sixth in CHA, but growth was readily apparent to close observers of the group and so far, it seems as if the trajectory has continued into the new year.

The Penn State men took a somewhat different approach, delaying their conference entry and playing last season as an NCAA Division I independent, although ten games against NCAA Division III and ACHA Division 1 teams were also part of the schedule. The Nittany Lions quickly gained some notoriety for unexpectedly winning games as heavy underdogs. The first strike in that category was made on October 20, 2012 with a 3-2 win in RIT's homecoming game in front of 10,556 orange-clad fans, with big wins against Air Force (5-1 at the Ice Pavilion), Ohio State (5-4 at the Three Rivers Classic in Pittsburgh) and Michigan State (3-2 in East Lansing, MI) following. Those were all prelude to a season-closing 3-2 overtime win at Wisconsin that ended with Holstrom's gritty score to complete a rally from a 2-0 hole. The Badgers, after a 2-7-5 start to the year, were in the middle of going 20-6-2 the rest of the way while capturing the WCHA playoff title and making an appearance in the NCAA Tournament, so taking them down was no insignificant feat.

Those big wins were awkwardly balanced by a few clunkers: losses against Division III teams Buffalo State and Neumann, as well as to ACHA Division 1's Arizona State. Still, the legacy of the 2012-13 men's season is an overwhelmingly positive one, as it showed that Nittany Lion hockey would not be roadkill for established programs while also setting the table for successes to come.

Milestones, both small and large, continued through the offseason, culminating with Penn State hockey's move into Pegula Ice Arena in early September and the facility's public opening a couple weeks later. In June, current freshmen Eamon McAdam (Islanders) and Mike Williamson (Canucks) became the first players selected in the NHL Entry Draft while affiliated with PSU. They join transfers Max Gardiner (Blues) and Patrick Koudys (Capitals) as draftees on the Nittany Lions this season. Penn State's long-awaited Big Ten membership for men's hockey became official in July.

Doing this has allowed me to learn a lot about both programs, as well as their coaches, student-athletes, and support staffs. I want to make one thing perfectly clear: Penn State will have two of the finest NCAA hockey programs in the nation, and it will happen sooner than people think. That's not artificial fan bravado, it's my sincere belief. Early in the life of TYT, I would get angry at disrespect towards PSU's NCAA programs, a largely defensive reaction. Now I just smile and shake my head, because I know I'm right.

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In the ACHA, Penn State already has two of the best teams in the nation in the Ice Lions and the Women's Ice Hockey Club.

While the Ice Lions fell just short of the ACHA Division 2 National Tournament in 2010-11, thanks to a loss to Maryland-Baltimore County at regionals, PSU bounced back in force the following year under new coach Josh Hand. Led by captain Jim Recupero and star goalie Tom Badali, the Ice Lions took Mid-Atlantic College Hockey by storm, winning both the North Division regular season title and the league's overall tournament title. A 25-game winning streak helped forge a 30-3-0 overall record and an autobid to nationals before Grand Valley State squashed PSU's dreams in a winner-take-all contest for advancement to the semifinals.

A redemption-driven squad got back on the horse immediately, going 27-6-1 in 2012-13 and collecting another MACH North Division championship, as well as a return trip to ACHAs behind players like power forward Creek Lewis and Brandon Russo, an All-American defenseman who would transfer to Canisius' NCAA Division I team after the season. However, an opening loss to Illinois State would prove too much to overcome at the national tournament, and the Ice Lions once again went home after the group stage. Ryan Behnken, who previously coached the team in 2010-11, returned this season and has Penn State off to a 4-0-0 start.

Players like Franky Reluzco have been important to the Ice Lions' recent national title push

Formed in the vapor trail of the Lady Icers program that elevated to NCAA status, the Women's Ice Hockey Club started up last year and faced less than optimal conditions, including a light schedule weakened even further by game cancellations and featuring exactly one home contest... in Altoona. Nevertheless, the team persevered, somehow snuck into the ACHA National Tournament in Ashburn, VA, then proceeded to take down top-seeded Alaska and defending champ Wisconsin-Stout (twice) en route to the title game before falling to West Chester. With nearly all of the squad back this season, a new membership in College Hockey East guaranteeing a healthy slate and a 2-0-0 start after a pair of wins over Liberty, expectations are high for the WIHC to contend for Penn State hockey's first national crown since the 2002-03 Icers took down Ohio in the final.

I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the Commonwealth Campus teams that also wear the blue and white with great distinction. The clubs at Penn States Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Brandywine and Harrisburg are, on balance, off to a fantastic start this season as well. In particular, always-tough Brandywine, high-flying Altoona and stoutly-balanced Behrend look primed to make serious plays for conference titles and ACHA Division 3 nationals appearances.

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Doubters have already looked rather foolish, and while most have softened their tone in recent months - sometimes tripping over themselves while backpedaling - let's not forget that many out there predicted that PSU hockey would be a losing proposition for a decade or more, playing in front of an empty barn. Those people, simply put, did not count on our people, specifically the efforts of Penn State's players, coaches, staffers and supporters who have laid the foundation for greatness.

In short, to say the future of Penn State hockey is "bright" is a little like saying that Pegula Ice Arena is "nice." It's obvious, almost to the point of redundancy.

But it's a future that will proceed without this blog.

After 1090 days and 1166 posts, it's time for me to end Thank You Terry and what has been a wonderful chapter in my life.

In my mind, the timing of this departure makes sense on numerous levels. My first post was October 18th, 2010, almost exactly one month after the announcement of Terry Pegula's donation. I'm leaving on October 11, 2013, a date marked by the opening of the arena made possible by that donation. In one sense then, TYT can be seen as documenting Penn State's transition from ACHA superpower to full Division I program. I hope I've done an adequate job filling that role, and I have every confidence that others covering Nittany Lions hockey will do more than that as we move forward. As much as anything else, over the last three years I've learned that Penn State produces the finest collection of journalists and bloggers on the planet, one that has my eternal gratitude for pushing me to be better. In many ways my work, at least as it pertains to the NCAA Division I men's team, is no longer necessary. It's my hope that the NCAA women and other teams receive that level of attention at some point as well.

I strongly believe that there are only two ways for blogs to end. One involves posts of decreasing frequency that usually begin "sorry I don't post more." Eventually, the gap between posts hits infinity, and the blog dies awkwardly, usually with something like "Season Preview, Part 1 of 2" at the top. Because I want to avoid that all costs, I've selected the other option: a planned departure (there may be a third option, specifically "don't end at all," but that's generally available only to blogs with more than one person working on it).

Life is the archnemesis of volunteer bloggers, and it always wins at some point, just as surely as death beats life. Or as surely as the Icers beat Washington & Jefferson. I've had a fantastic set of life circumstances that have allowed me to pour more of myself into TYT than most could have. But as my tenure as a full-time grad student winds down and I prepare to (re-)enter the real world, I know that in the long run, a surviving TYT would be a shell of what it's been, and simply put, I've invested too much into doing this to be willing to accept that outcome.

To be brutally honest, I'm not sure that all the time in the world would be enough. This past year, it's been a tremendous struggle just to keep my head above water while singlehandedly addressing the heightened news volume that comes with varsity hockey and the expectations I have for myself to produce a steady flow of high-quality content that isn't merely a copy-paste of, or a link to, a "real" reporter's work. As things move forward and ramp up even further from where we sit today, I simply don't believe that it's possible to do what I consider a satisfactory job while sitting four hours away from Hockey Valley in Ohio.

In short, I know I'm making the right choice, although it is one that breaks my heart. My biggest regret today is that I know a lot of people have really appreciated what I've done here, and I feel like I'm letting those people down by stopping. To those who have offered their words of encouragement, either in person or digitally, thank you. You're a huge part of why I was able to plow through some rough patches, and I hope that you're able to forgive me for not carrying the flag any further.

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So, now what?

Well, I'm probably going to keep a pretty low profile for a bit, at least through the 2013-14 season. The struggles of the past year have, if it wasn't as obvious on the blog as I think it was, made me quite jaded about a lot of things, and I don't like feeling that way. My hope is that by dialing back my obsessive nature a bit, getting over my competitive streak and my Pavlovian "oh $#&% I have to write a post" reflex whenever news comes up and just enjoying what promises to be a special season the way "normal" people will, I can re-program myself.

Eventually, I'd like to write a book about the history of Penn State hockey in all of its glorious forms, from the beginning to the opening of Pegula Ice Arena. I mean, why not? I've done much of the research, it's a topic I really enjoy and with an editor, my writing may even become passable. The primary issue at this point is that for it to be the best possible product, the athletic department's support would be required and I know I don't have that right now. Time heals all wounds, as they say, so once I feel up to it I'm going to stay under the radar, work at it behind the scenes as time allows, and hope that the climate is different in the future. Maybe someday, I'll sign a copy for you at a game. That's the plan, anyway. Unless paper books have been completely obliterated by the time it comes together.

Should my self-imposed hiatus from "beyond just a fan" stuff be successful, I'd even consider blogging again. If a Penn State or college hockey blog approaches me down the road with an offer to cover the hockey programs in spite of my baggage, I'd at least give it serious thought. I may be delusional, but I believe that a less taxing responsibility, as in sharing the beat with someone else or limiting my scope, while not having to concern myself with back-end problems, would allow a fresh start and be something a bit more sustainable than the present reality of an unpaid full-time job.

Women's Ice Hockey Club captain Carly Szyszko has her eyes on a title in her senior year

If you haven't noticed, I began working with the Women's Ice Hockey Club midway through their inaugural 2012-13 season, and I plan to continue doing that because I'm having a blast. The irony of the situation isn't lost on me - for years, I couldn't wait to ditch the ACHA for the NCAA, but after that happened, I wound up going full circle and helping out an ACHA team. The WIHC gives me the same joy that I got from Hockey Management Association as a Penn State undergrad, a sentiment that later helped produce TYT. Unlike that first go, my involvement with the WIHC doesn't have to end when I graduate, so I'm going to keep chasing that feeling as long as it's there, as long as I'm capable and as long as they want me around.

I hope to see you at one of their games this season. I promise that you'll enjoy it if you like Penn State hockey, because that team is what Penn State and the sport of hockey is all about. Here's their schedule (the next home game is against Michigan State on the 19th, at 8:00 p.m. in the PIA Community Rink).

I'll still be a frequent guest at Penn State hockey games - both men's and women's, NCAA and ACHA - as my schedule allows, and if you recognize me (I'll probably be wearing a number 3 Icers jersey or a number 24 Lady Icers/Women's Ice Hockey Club jersey with my name on it the most of the time), feel free to start a conversation or simply say hi. I may actually have time to talk now.

And hey, if you really like who I am and what I'm all about, or at the very least think you do, I have a personal Twitter account and would love to connect with as many of you as possible. If this is the end, no hard feelings, I get that your interest in Penn State hockey doesn't mean that you have to care whether I'm having sushi for dinner. Fair warning: As should be obvious from what I just said, tweets on that account will be those of a regular guy who happens to be a Penn State hockey fan, because that's what I'm going to be now. It's not going to be @TYTBlog, just with my real name on it.

In closing, I would like to say thank you:

• to John Dufford, Art Davis, Larry Lightbody, Pop Golden, Herb Baetz, Hugo Bezdek and all who chased the dream of varsity hockey at Penn State but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.


• to visionaries like Roy Scott, Larry Hendry, Joe Battista, Vance McCullough and countless other players, coaches and support staffers who also played a part in founding and then building the seven-time national champion Icers, the best program in the history of both the ACHA specifically and non-varsity hockey generally.


• to Ellen Bradley, Kathy Beckford and Vinnie Scalamogna, who said "hey, we need a women's team around here too" back in 1996 and jumped all the hurdles to make it happen, and to all who followed them as Lady Icers.


• to Mary Kate Tonetti, Katie Vaughan, Carly Szyszko, Allie Rothman and Patrick Fung, who went through the same struggle 16 years later and then gave me the opportunity to be a part of something special.


• to Altoona-turned-Ice Lions manager Bridgette DaSilva, who convinced me to come out for a game between two Commonwealth Campus teams back in January and opened my eyes to a previously undiscovered realm of Penn State hockey, and to Tom and Amy Lantz, whose hospitality made my trips to Toontown a lot of fun.


• to Hockey Management Association, which served as my introduction to Penn State hockey after I arrived on campus as a freshman unaware that there was a team at PSU, and to the Greenberg Ice Pavilion, which I'll always remember fondly.


• to all of the players, coaches and parents involved with all of Penn State's hockey teams that I've met and covered in the course of TYT, each of whom, without exception, has earned my unwavering support even independent of our common university. If I've done nothing else here, I hope my efforts have been worthy of the pride you've given me in Penn State every single day.

Thank you to each and every one of you for taking this journey with me.

And of course, thank you Terry.

Best regards,

Kyle Rossi

An Arena in Mastheads

As I'm sure you've noticed, TYT's masthead (and related components like the Twitter avatar) is frequently updated to reflect the state of Pegula Ice Arena. It started out with crude renderings, continued through the construction process, and now reflects a completed product. To celebrate today, which saw the initial movement of equipment and personnel into PIA, here's a look back at everything that has graced the top of this blog. All images can be enlarged by clicking.

What now? I'm open to suggestions and honestly haven't even considered this admittedly inevitable day in terms of TYT's branding. Let me know if you have anything in the comments.

* I'm pretty good about keeping the purely self-indulgent posts to a minimum - just give me this one.

M: Penn State 6 at Sacred Heart 3

First off, I want to thank each of you for your support, or at least understanding, of my absence for Saturday evening's men's win over Sacred Heart. Suffice it to say, I'm a little bit of a hothead and needed to take a step back from things for a few hours. Simple as that.

The issue, for those who don't follow me on Twitter, is that there was a media tour given of the Pegula Ice Arena site yesterday (I'm sure you've seen some of the photos and videos that resulted from that already, they're pretty amazing - one photo is above, of course, and one video is linked below). Despite carrying a full-season credential for Penn State hockey, I was not invited. Last night, I was given the explanation that the tour was designed to take advantage of the "national and regional" media in town for the Penn State-Ohio State football game and who don't cover PSU hockey on a regular basis. I'd be a hypocrite if I took any great issue with that idea, as I've expressed concern over the interest of the wider Penn State community before, and the growth of the programs should always come ahead of this blog and my ego.

However, that explanation doesn't account for the fact that among others Rob Greissinger, one of the Daily Collegian's hockey writers, was on the tour. So was Ben Jones, who regularly covers hockey for StateCollege.com. So was Greg Pickel, whose hockey stuff can be read on several different outlets. All three of them do a fantastic job, and this isn't meant to imply otherwise, but their presence would seem to contradict the reasons given for my exclusion. Student papers and websites named for Penn State's home borough are not "regional" or "national," and as stated, there has been no shortage of great hockey coverage from those outlets. All three of them are fully credentialed for hockey as well and at every men's home game and even some away games. In short, their inclusion was not growing Penn State hockey's coverage footprint in any way.

More than anything, I think this and a lot of things simply boil down to "we just don't like (or respect or both) you, and aren't going to include you if we don't absolutely have to." There's a larger conversation in there about whether I should be media (which involves dancing a certain dance in exchange for less access than they give themselves) or a blog (which doesn't have to follow rules, but gets no access), but I'll save that for some other time. In general, my feeling that I'm sort of awkwardly caught between those two things.

Before moving on, I do want to reiterate one thing: my love of Penn State hockey. It's why I've paid thousands of dollars for the privilege to do this. And honestly, it's what makes my continued struggles in certain areas so perplexing to me, because I believe that I've demonstrated - both through this blog and otherwise - my support for the programs.

Anyway, on to the business of the day...

Box score // GoPSUSports.com recap // SacredHeartPioneers.com recap

StateCollege.com recap and PIA tour video

GoPSUsports.com Guy Gadowsky postgame comments

I probably need to give some thought to how I handle away games with no available video (sort of a new reality this season) and when I'm not in attendance. The cruel truth is that I don't have any great insight regarding those games - how can anyone without the ability to see it? - and simply post about those by cobbling together the available recap stories, the box score and maybe a couple tweets. I'll try to interpret what can be interpreted and offer some context.

Is the result a worthwhile product? Does it add anything to the conversation? Does it assume facts not in evidence? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm offering something unique and making the best of a bad situation. Or maybe I'm offering an inferior product just in the name of not taking the easy way out.

This time around, and in consideration of the fact that I was even less plugged in than normal for a "blind" game (see above), I'm simply going to re-publish Penn State's game release here. Actual media outlets do this all the time and get to be called actual media outlets, so maybe they're on to something. As with anything I do here, I'm accepting feedback on which approach you'd prefer. Naturally, if I'm in attendance or if streaming video is available (which will be most of the time), I'll continue with the usual live blog/recap approach.

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Junior defenseman Nate Jensen scored his first goal of the season to help PSU pull away in the third.

Six Different Lions Score in 6-3 Win Vs. SHU

MILFORD, Conn. - Six different Nittany Lions scored as the Penn State men's hockey team skated to a 6-3 victory against Sacred Heart at Milford Ice Pavilion Saturday evening. The Nittany Lions improved to 4-2-0 with their third straight win.

Senior forward Michael Longo (Allison Park, Pa.) and junior defenseman Nate Jensen (Shorewood, Minn.) notched their first goals of the season, and junior forward Michael McDonagh (Wilmington, Mass.) tallied a game-high three assists. Sophomore Max Gardiner (Deephaven, Minn.) and freshmen Curtis Loik (North Vancouver, B.C.), Jonathan Milley (Gatineau, Que.) and Mark Yanis (Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.) also scored.

The Nittany Lions fell behind, 1-0, early in the first period before scoring three goals in a 5:06 span to take a 3-1 lead. The Pioneers tallied later in the frame before the teams traded goals in the second period as Penn State skated to a 4-3 second-period advantage. The Nittany Lions added a pair of goals in the final stanza as they defeated their fourth Atlantic Hockey opponent of the season.

Penn State outshot the Pioneers by a 31-19 margin. The Nittany Lions were 0-for-5 on the power play, while Sacred Heart finished 0-for-4 with the man advantage. Sophomore goaltender PJ Musico (Orange, Calif.) improved to 4-0-0 with 16 saves, while Sacred Heart netminder Andrew Bodnarchuk turned aside 25 shots.

Penn State found itself down 1-0 just 5:03 into the game before the Nittany Lions responded with their three-goal run. Following Josh Phillips' marker, Longo knotted the game at 1-1 with his first career tally just 32 seconds later. McDonagh passed to freshman defenseman Joseph Lordo (St. Louis. Mo.), who fired a shot from the blue line that Longo tipped in for the goal.

Gardiner gave Penn State a 2-1 advantage 1:07 later. Freshman defenseman Luke Juha (Mississauga, Ont.) sent a pass across the blue line to classmate Yanis, who found Gardiner near the edge of the crease. The Deephaven, Minn., native's first attempt was stopped before he took the puck around the cage and slipped it to the back of the net.

With 9:19 left in the period, Milley extended the Penn State lead to 3-1. Freshman defenseman Connor Varley (Lansdale, Pa.) passed to classmate Casey Bailey (Anchorage, Alaska), who recorded a point in his third straight game, along the half boards. The Anchorage, Alaska, native found Milley near the bottom of the left circle, where he put a shot toward the goal that went past Bodnarchuk.

Sacred Heart closed the gap to 3-2 with 2:24 left in the opening frame. The Pioneers skated through the neutral zone on an odd-man rush before Brian Sheehan wristed a shot that was caught in Musico's pads before trickling in for the goal.

Both teams scored once in the second period as Penn State secured a 4-3 lead. With 11:51 left in the frame, Jensen gave the Nittany Lions a 4-2 advantage. Lordo passed up the boards to McDonagh, who raced down the right-wing boards before sending a backdoor pass to Jensen for the goal.

Drew George tallied for the Pioneers with 7:27 left in the period to make it a 4-3 game. George received a pass from Eric Delong and finished the tic-tac-toe play for the marker.

In the third period, Yanis extended the Penn State lead to 5-3 with his second goal of the season. McDonagh passed to Yanis at the blue line, where the defenseman rifled a slap shot high to the blocker side. Senior forward Eric Steinour (Carlisle, Pa.) also recorded his first assist of the season.

Loik added his goal 1:15 later. Freshman David Glen (Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.) passed to Jensen, who took the puck into the slot. Loik then batted the puck out of mid-air and into the back of the net. Glen extended his point-scoring streak to three games with the helper.

Penn State will return to action Tuesday, Oct. 30 when it visits Fredonia State. Opening faceoff is set at 7 p.m.

Sorry I'm Not Sorry

Today marks TYT's second birthday. It's been a ride, that's for certain.

On some fundamental level, I'm still the same guy who started this mess. That's not to say that I haven't changed at all, I have. Sometimes drastically. As I've gained readership, I've dialed back the sarcasm a bit. That's not to say that it doesn't pop up here and there, obviously it does. But I've presented things in a much more "mainstream acceptable" format most of the time. It wasn't a conscious decision I made, and neither was my steadily-increasing amount of content.

George Saad's (sitting) OT winner in the Friday matchup with UCO was the easy highlight of TYT's first weekend in business. Photo: Christine Reckner/Collegian

My first game "recap" was published on TYT's first day, covering the Icers' games on October 15th and 16th, 2010 against Central Oklahoma. It went up on the following Monday and was a relatively brief set of thoughts about what I saw from the two games, taken together. The difference between that and my most recent game coverage, which included a live blog, a photo gallery and videos of postgame comments, is quite striking. Is it better now? It's more, that's for sure. Re-reading the older post now, I think my observational abilities have dulled quite a bit in favor of the constant typing to ensure that I don't leave dead air in the live blog. I'm certainly more thorough than I ever planned with my gameday stuff. The original plan was to watch the games just as I would anyway, then toss something up with about as much preparation behind it as a message board post.

If I could offer advice to bloggers starting up it would be to, above all else, make sure you're having fun. This is a hobby, after all. One way that "fun" rapidly becomes something else is through the volume creep that I've allowed to happen. That's not to say that this isn't still fun for me - I'd quit if it wasn't, this isn't my livelihood - but it's certainly more stressful and entails more responsibility and expense than I ever planned. It's a ton more work than I expected too. Consider my very first post:

I don’t aim to be purely a news source for Penn State hockey, because quite frankly, I can’t compete with Penn State hockey’s tremendous official site, the fantastic View From The Booth blog done by broadcaster Steve Penstone, or the great coverage from the Collegian. I highly recommend any of those sources, they’re as good as you’ll find in their respective areas.

And...

I hope to add my own unique views on Penn State, hockey, and life as a guy pretty well obsessed with those two things. There will be that trademark blogger snark on occasion, although most posts will not in fact be written while in my parents’ basement in my underwear. I’ll talk about the games themselves, although probably not in journalistically-correct recap form. When something happens off the ice, I’ll talk about that too, although I can pretty much promise that I won’t be the one to break the story. In between, I’ll mix in a healthy dose of perspective, some glimpses into some of my memorabilia collection, and a few other regular features.

Yikes. I'm not quite sure how I got from there to here, but that's precisely my point.

After hitting on it sporadically in year one (mostly through the World University Games), I began covering women's hockey regularly last season. Sometime in the middle of last season, I ramped up what I was doing with the ACHA Division 2 Ice Lions, and I've been with the women's ACHA D2 team as it started up this season. Those have been three of the best decisions I've made. My stats say that you guys don't care about any of that as much as the men's NCAA team, but I'm not going to apologize for continuing to post about those three teams, because they deserve it. Yeah, I suppose you can argue that it's been a big part of that volume creep I just lamented, but at the same time, I enjoy doing it much more than I don't enjoy the extra work.

Players like Katie Murphy (left) and Lindsay Reihl make covering the NCAA women's program fun.

Some things haven't changed. Now, as then, I get into disagreements with others. Most recently, it has been with two fairly prominent entities in college hockey circles - College Hockey News and Chris Peters.

To briefly recap, CHN brought out the tired (and not really accurate) "PSU hockey starts under a black cloud" storyline and directly stated that Joe Paterno engaged in an active cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's crimes. Previous to that, they rubbed me the wrong way with an interview of Guy Gadowsky over the summer, in which they led with seven consecutive "scandal" questions (it directly tied into ten of the first eleven, in fact). At one point, they took an adversarial approach after Gadowsky answered a question about seeing the "guys who basically brought you to Penn State" (a little bit of a curious assertion in and of itself) go down by saying that he didn't come to PSU because of a couple of individuals:

But they put you in a tough spot. No one blames you, but when you came to Penn State, you talked a lot about how Penn State is never in the news for bad things. And they really made you look bad.

Eventually, after still another follow-up, Gadowsky said "Your first reaction was as a parent, of course. I would be completely dishonest if I didn't go through that emotion." HEADLINE!

Peters said that people who say "we are still Penn State" make him "squeamish" and then proceeded to produce a somewhat bizarre criticism of PSU's jerseys, which included him picking at the fact that the shoulder numbers are... in the exact same location as those worn by most USA Hockey teams, Peters' primary coverage interest.

I previously had a good relationship with both Peters and CHN. I didn't care and blasted them anyway. Both parties were unhappy about what I said and emailed me about it. I still don't care.

I feel like I get into more scraps than most bloggers or journalists out there - I've even had my dicey moments with PSU athletic department employees - and have come to the conclusion that yes, it's probably me. I'm not always an easy guy to get along with, and I don't believe that tweeting me or linking my work should shield someone from future criticism, if warranted.

On a related note, I also don't apologize for the Paterno quote that appears at the top of the blog. I try (really, I do) to not get into most of that stuff, but yes, I do have an opinion of the late coach. I have an opinion of what happened in 1998 and 2001 (we'll probably never have objective truth in that department), I have an opinion of how the whole thing was handled by PSU administration, and I have an opinion of what Paterno's legacy should be. You're welcome to assume what those opinions are and to disagree with them. A couple people have expressed that disagreement to me, with no hard feelings whatsoever on my end. It's a sensitive topic, I get that. I try not to force my views about it on people - it really has nothing to do with hockey - beyond that quote, but I will use this opportunity to say that it isn't going anywhere. My stance on that probably hurts the blog in some way. It may even be why my content has never once been tweeted by the official men's and women's accounts, even when it's opinion-neutral and, in my biased opinion, at or above the standard of other things they've tweeted from third-party sources.

I've considered quitting a few times. Once was during the summer of 2011 when I applied to be the athletic communications assistant for men's hockey. Between my early work on this blog and my history with the program, I thought I had a shot. A couple days after I submitted my resume, Penn State SID Jeff Nelson got in touch with me, and asked for my help in getting the word out about the fact that Armstrong (a cable provider in my area) still does not carry Big Ten Network. I thought - understandably, I think - that it was a test and acted accordingly. I also thought that I did a good job with it. I was wrong on at least one of those two counts, as I wasn't even interviewed. As someone who sincerely believed in the whole "Penn State/Penn State hockey family" ideal, I was pretty disillusioned about that. Then, when the scandal hit last November, I went to bed one night wondering whether I wanted to continue to have anything to do with the university. This blog and the hockey programs, as it turned out, were the only things that kept me on board.

Sometimes those close calls have been of a more positive nature. I've turned down a couple offers to write for bigger blogs in the past. I recently inquired about the possibility of covering hockey for Black Shoe Diaries, but ultimately decided to stay put (to be completely honest with you guys, BSD is probably the one blog where I would consider a move, but right now, I'm not interested).

Why not move on to a bigger and better blog? Simply put, I like my situation here. I don't have any aspirations of becoming a professional journalist. This isn't my livelihood and I don't have to cater to an audience to eat. Yeah, I care about viewership numbers and recognition, we all have egos after all, but not enough to compromise my opinions or pull punches. I'm not accountable to anyone but myself. It's pretty nice, actually.

I'm still not quite sure what these are.

My press pass says I'm media, and I suppose I am, but I'm not a journalist. I make no claims of objectivity. I'm fiercely loyal to Penn State hockey. I wear PSU merch in the press box, much to the consternation of some, I'm sure. I fist-pumped when Casey Bailey scored against AIC last Friday and threw my hands up at a no-call in the women's game the next day. I think I'm fair when commenting on the teams (in other words, not a total homer), but that doesn't change the fact that I want to see each of them succeed. Journalists aren't supposed to say things like that, but I make no apologies for the fact that I'm not a journalist.

A lot of my attitudes are the product of a guy who is still awkward about the fact that anyone actually cares about what I have to say, and a lot of the contradictions in what I've said here trace back to that fact. It probably sounds disingenuous at this point, but I never expected any of this, I figured I'd just be some guy shouting to the internet. It still surprises me when a Chris Peters finds out that I said something about him, just like it surprises me when people who I respect tremendously and who probably have better things to do than read TYT toss me a compliment.

At the same time, I still have a sincere appreciation for each and every one of you reading this, even if you think I'm a blowhard, even if I've trashed you before, even if you've trashed me back. I might be taking the "I'm not in this to make friends" angle, but at the same time, I have made friends in this as well, and I greatly enjoy the interaction TYT has facilitated. I said above that I'm not accountable to anyone but myself, but at the same time, that's not really true - I'm accountable to you guys as well. You are a big part of what keeps me going, what keeps me trying to produce stuff at a high level. You're what keeps me from taking a couple weeks off, then leading off the return post with "sorry about that." I probably don't say it enough, but thank you.

Most importantly, what I believe hasn't changed - specifically, with respect to the vision of Penn State hockey, the people charged with running it, the student-athletes who give me something to write about and the future of the programs. I have tremendous confidence in the fact that, despite the patronization or outright sneering from some corners, we'll eventually have four national championship programs on campus. I have even more confidence in the fact that the group of student-athletes and coaches representing Penn State will continue to make all of us proud regardless of what happens on the ice.

There have been ups and downs over the last 24 months. I've mentioned a few here, I've left an undefinable number of others out, but on balance, I'm definitely not sorry I decided to do this. Once again, thank you all for your part in what has truly been a memorable life experience. And it only gets better from here.

The TYT Plan

As promised back when the men's and women's schedules both became official, I want to share some of my plans for the coming season with all of you.

First, the hard reality: I'm one guy, not a staff. I live in Ohio (a handicap in numerous ways, not just relating to this blog). Furthermore, I'm not exactly a wealthy man, in fact I'm your typically poor grad student at the moment. That's actually nice in some ways, as I generally have more free time to do this than I would otherwise. But again, one guy, out of state, limited finances, some restrictions on time.

This coming season is going to be fantastic, though. It's something for which we've waited for a long time, and I plan on being around it as much as possible. So here's what I'm thinking about how to approach the schedule.

Some quick definitions are in order. Basically, "live blog" means I'm parked at home in front of a computer, live-blogging the game on this site using the Cover It Live platform, as I did for most games last season. "Recaps" are only done as a last resort, generally in cases of conflict, or if I'm traveling somewhere else that weekend. They mean that, for whatever reason, I couldn't watch the game live, but of course I'll still present a summary of what happened. "Attending," obviously, means that I plan to be there. This will take the form of a live blog plus postgame quotes if I'm credentialed or a recap - hopefully something above and beyond typical - if I'm not (I can't promise that I'll be able to get media access everywhere).

Here's an example of each, if you're still not clear:

Attendance: M: Penn State 9 vs. Mercyhurst 1 // 2/11 Mercyhurst Postgame: Guy Gadowsky // 2/11 Mercyhurst Postgame: The Players
Live Blog: M: Penn State 4 vs. Oklahoma 3 (OT)
Recap: W: Penn State 5-2 vs. Liberty 1-3

Non-attendance live blogs are always conditional on my ability to procure a stream of the game. If I can't do that for whatever reason, those revert to simple recaps.

Kaillie Goodnough - a teammate of Emily Laurenzi's at NSA - will lead the Syracuse defense
into the Ice Pavilion on October 13th and 14th. Attending those games seems like a no-brainer.

Attending

October
12-14 Men vs. AIC (12th), Women vs. Syracuse (13th, 14th)
19-20 Men at DIII Buffalo State (19th), Men at RIT (20th)

November
9-11 Men vs. Air Force (9th, 10th), Women vs. Robert Morris (10th, 11th)
24-25 Men at Union
30-December 1 Women at Mercyhurst

December
28-29 Men at Pittsburgh College Hockey Invitational

January
19 Men vs. Vermont in Philadelphia, PA
25-26 Men at Michigan State

February
8-9 Men vs. Alabama-Huntsville, Women vs. Lindenwood

March
1-3, 8-9 Women at CHA Tournament (for any possible location except Lindenwood - move any games at LU to "live blog")

Live Blogs

October
5-6 Women at Vermont
25-27 Women vs. RIT (25th), Men at Army (26th), Men at Sacred Heart (27th)
30 Men at DIII Fredonia State

November
2-3 Women vs. Sacred Heart, Men vs. DIII Buffalo State (3rd)
16-17 Women at Lindenwood

December
7-8 Men at Holy Cross (7th), Women at St. Lawrence (8th)
15 Men vs. Robert Morris

January
4-5 Men at Connecticut
11-12 Women at Union
15 Men vs. DIII Neumann
29 Women vs. Princeton

February
1-2 Men vs. ACHA Ohio, Women vs. Mercyhurst
15-16 Women at RIT
22-23 Women at Robert Morris
24-25 Men at Wisconsin

Recaps

October
13 Men vs. AIC in Wilkes-Barre, PA
19-20 Women at Sacred Heart
26 Women vs. RIT

November
30-December 1 Men vs. ACHA Arizona State

December
7-8 Women at St. Lawrence (7th), Men at Holy Cross (8th)

January
4-5 Women vs. DIII Chatham
11-12 Men vs. USNTDP
25-26 Women at Syracuse

February
15-16 Men vs. ACHA Oklahoma

Obviously, I reserve the right to alter or cancel any of this, right up until 30 seconds before puck drop. Sometimes I can't make planned trips, sometimes I can't watch the game, sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes my parents drop unbreakable plans on me with less than 24 hours notice, and sometimes I get burned out and just bail to get trashed <cough>11/19/2011 Delaware at PSU</cough>. But as of today, I do plan on completing all of this. It's an ambitious plan, but hey, this is a once-in-a-lifetime season. Here's how it all breaks down:

Attending: 14 men's games (5 home, 8 away, 1 neutral), 10+ women's games (6 home, 2 away, 2+ TBD)
Live Blogging: 13 men's games (5 home, 8 away), 17 women's games (6 home, 11 away)
Recapping: 8 men's games (7 home, 1 away), 8 women's games (3 home, 5 away)

On Thanksgiving weekend, hopefully, it will be all about the U.

I built the plan around attendance. Obviously, that first home weekend as well as the events in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are musts. RIT is a program I like a lot, and I wanted to make that trip from when the game was announced. Union, by last season's standards anyway, is the best team on the schedule and seems like an obvious trip. For the women, Mercyhurst is a day trip for me. I tried to cash in on the weekends where both teams would be home, with preference for strong opponents. Once I decided on that, I filled in live blogs for games where I'll theoretically be at home, moved the conflicts with travel to recaps, and hashed out whatever men's-women's conflicts remained after that.

Beyond all of that, I'm planning a weekly post to keep up with the Ice Lions, as well as the coming ACHA women's team. That's actually above and beyond what I did for them last season, when I'd generally just sneak the D2 into Three Stars, with the exception of a handful of live blogs. Should either team make it to ACHA nationals, I will live blog those games as well.

Speaking of Three Stars, that will still go up on Mondays. Commit Cycle will return (thankfully with fewer players to track, because those are hard to put together) during the season, although I'll suspend Breakout Past by the end of September much like I did through 2011-2012. And of course, news will be posted when news happens, which tends to be at the most inconvenient times possible.

The reason I'm putting this out there now? Quite simply, I wanted to get this big editorial decision out in the open as early as possible, because I want your feedback. Does this work for you? Is there somewhere I absolutely need to attend but don't plan to? Is there something special you want me to deliver from these new, strange things called DI rinks? Do you think I've undervalued a recap game that should instead be a live blog? Would you instead rather see more recaps and fewer live blogs (there certainly are valid reasons for that opinion)? Can you subsidize my travel expenses (joking...kind of)?

Signing Off

PennStateHockey.com, the Icers' website, has put up a splash page with the following message:

PennStateHockey.com is Moving On!

After decades of work and perseverance, the dream is becoming a reality starting this fall - varsity hockey is back at Penn State! One minor portion of that involves this website - specifically, this domain name. Beginning next month, the PennStateHockey.com URL will automatically direct you to a re-designed, men's varsity hockey page on GoPSUSports.com. The address will remain valid for some time after the switch as well.

After links to the GoPSUSports.com men's hockey site and the Pegula Ice Arena renderings and construction camera, the page continues.

All of the information that was contained on the "club" site may still be accessed at the address: www.clubs.psu.edu/up/PSUIcers. This ends a 16-year run for me as the webmaster for this site. I would like to thank everyone for the kind words and compliments over the years. It has been an honor to be involved with such a tremendous program.

"Me/I," of course, is Rodney Martin. The Penn State Hockey Hall of Famer, Class of 2007, also serves as our top-shelf PA announcer in addition to his webmaster and other duties.

There are many little things that have and will come and go throughout this transition, and I won't post about all of them. Then again, this is not a little thing. For years - 16 of them to be exact - and through several upgrades, the Icers had a website that was easily the class of the entire ACHA and probably the NCAA as well. If you don't fully grasp how fortunate we were to have it, you've probably never done things that involve researching other teams like assemble an Icers media guide or write a Penn State hockey blog. As someone who has done both of those things, take my word for it on the evaluation. I'm sure that throughout the remainder of TYT's life, I'll run into instances where I'll miss something on there that I did take for granted. That's not at all a knock on the new primary official site, it's a testament to the pure depth and quality that preceded it in representing Penn State hockey's internet presence.

I'm often self-effacing about TYT's popularity, but much of what this blog does enjoy traces back to the 2010-11 season, when TYT enjoyed a brief placement on PennStateHockey.com's front page right after its launch.

While it (along with the Collegian) was removed due to its unofficial status after about six weeks - a decision I completely understood and even agreed with - the site to this day remains the fifth largest source of TYT traffic. Most blogs are abandoned within one month of creation, so it's easy to see the significance of getting an audience size beyond anything I ever imagined that quickly (incidentally, the post shown in the above image is dated November 15, 2010, three days shy of TYT's one-month anniversary). It was a class move by a class guy running a class website. And yes, it deserves some of the credit for TYT's still being here today.

Best wishes in "retirement," Rodman!

A DI Diary

As some of you may know, I've spent most of the last couple weeks grinding through the all-time schedule and results for the men's program(s). Today, I'm happy to report that the hard part of the project is complete and that I believe I've put together the most complete historical score record of Penn State hockey in existence:

M Results/Season: 1909-present

I won't bore you with my methodology (it's on the page I just linked if you really, really need it), but I will share something that I believe is of general interest - PSU's all time record against current NCAA Division I programs.

The varsity team of the 1940s, as most of you probably already know, played three different teams presently competing at the DI level a total of four times. The fact that they were all road games should be about the least surprising thing ever to anyone familiar with that team.

2/5/1944 @ Cornell, L 1-8
2/26/1944 @ Army, L 3-18
1/18/1947 @ Colgate, L 0-14
2/12/1947 @ Army, L 3-12

The Icers also played Army twice, once in West Point, once in a tournament at Kent State (Army's records omit the first of these two as an exhibition):

11/21/1980 @ Army, L 4-6
3/6/1982 vs. Army (at Kent, OH), L 3-10

The Black Knights, of course, appear on the coming season's schedule, October 26th to be precise.

Alabama-Huntsville claims the first three club national titles ever, in 1982, 1983 and 1984. The Chargers beat PSU in the championship tournament en route to the first two, then three times in the regular season leading to the third.

Another team on this year's schedule is Alabama-Huntsville. The Chargers, much like Penn State, transitioned to NCAA status from a highly-successful club program. While the two have not met since UAH's permanent move to DI, from Huntsville's 1979 formation until their elevation to Division II in 1985, PSU-UAH games were season-defining tilts.

3/12/1982 vs. Alabama-Huntsville (at Boulder, CO), L 3-4
3/5/1983 vs. Alabama-Huntsville (at Huntsville, AL), L 3-4
11/18/1983 @ Alabama-Huntsville, L 3-6
11/19/1983 @ Alabama-Huntsville, L 3-4 (OT)
12/9/1983 vs. Alabama-Huntsville (at Johnstown, PA), L 3-9
12/10/1983 vs. Alabama-Huntsville (at Johnstown, PA), W 5-4
11/16/1984 @ Alabama-Huntsville, L 3-6
11/17/1984 @ Alabama-Huntsville, L 2-4

The first two games on that list took place at the U.S. National Collegiate Club Hockey Championships, and UAH went on to take the title in both 1982 and 1983. The Chargers also claim a 1984 title. Penn State does as well, a reality made possible by the existence of two separate national championship tournaments in 1984 (and 1985 as well). UAH and PSU did meet four times during the 1983-1984 regular season, with three of four meetings going to the boys in (lighter) blue. I'm not giving up our stake in 1984 though, don't worry.

Huntsville went on to become quite successful in DII, taking the 1996 and 1998 national championships. After the first of those, they handed the Icers their worst-ever loss (tied with a 15-0 defeat by Princeton's freshman team in their second year of existence).

10/25/1996 @ Alabama-Huntsville, L 0-15
10/26/1996 @ Alabama-Huntsville, L 1-3

Joe Battista's ninth game as Icers coach was against Holy Cross, a PSU opponent on December 7th and 8th this year.

11/21/1987 @ Holy Cross, L 1-7

One final team on the Nittany Lions' inaugural NCAA schedule is Robert Morris. During RMU's formative years, the Icers earned a split in two games. The win is PSU's only one against a current DI team that came while that team was competing in DI.

10/8/2005 @ Robert Morris, W 3-2
10/8/2006 @ Robert Morris, L 0-6

Legendary Notre Dame coach Lefty Smith - who now has his name on the rink at the new Compton Family Ice Arena - coached against PSU four times.

Notre Dame dropped from NCAA Division I to the non-varsity ranks for a single season, 1983-1984, before bumping back up for 1984-1985. The Irish played PSU twice in each of those years.

2/10/1984 vs. Notre Dame (at Johnstown, PA), T 4-4
2/11/1984 vs. Notre Dame (at Johnstown, PA), L 1-6
11/2/1984 @ Notre Dame, L 2-8
11/3/1984 @ Notre Dame, L 3-10

Northern Arizona was a DI program from 1981 until 1986. It's a little suspect that they would play in the club national championship during that time (the source of the one PSU-NAU meeting), but hey, they were a year away from having 17-year NHL vet Greg Adams on their roster, so whatever. Kent State was a frequent Icers opponent both before and after their DI run from 1986 through 1994, but the teams only met twice during KSU's varsity era. Findlay and Wayne State round out the collection of now-defunct DI-ers (of note: PSU split a pair of games with Findlay during their time in DII immediately before moving up).

3/14/1982 vs. Northern Arizona (at Boulder, CO), W 5-4 (OT)
2/13/1987 @ Kent State, L 2-9
2/14/1987 @ Kent State, L 2-8
11/26/1999 @ Findlay, L 2-6
11/27/1999 vs. Wayne State (at Findlay, OH), W 5-2

Finally, a one-off game with no obvious segue.

10/17/1993 @ Massachusetts, L 2-7

In all (and excluding the UAH games along with the first two Notre Dame games), the Icers were 3-10-0 against DI teams, with a goals for-goals against of 34-85, or 2.6-6.5 per game. Certainly not pretty, but then again, not terrible either, all things considered. I should point out that I've excluded Villanova from that record (and indeed this entire post until now). For what it's worth, the Icers were 6-1-1 with a 49-18 GF-GA against the Wildcats from 1982 through 1998, the span VU was listed as an NCAA Division I program. I think Nova was about as DI as I am a Pulitzer Prize candidate though.

Mercyhurst and Canisius are now Atlantic Hockey rivals, but in another day and another division, they often opposed the Icers.

Before I exit this post, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that some of PSU's most extensive history with current DI programs actually comes via Atlantic Hockey's Canisius and Mercyhurst. The Lakers were DIII from 1987 through 1992, then DII from 1992 through 2000, before finally hitting DI. The Golden Griffins were a DIII program from 1980 until 1998, then jumped straight to DI at that point.

11/14/1981 @ Canisius, L 4-8
1/16/1982 vs. Canisius, W 6-4
1/29/1983 vs. Canisius (at Annapolis, MD), W 7-4
2/22/1985 @ Canisius, L 6-12
11/7/1986 vs. Canisius (at Allegany, NY), L 3-5
11/4/1988 vs. Canisius (at Geneseo, NY), L 2-6
10/26/1991 @ Canisius, L 4-5
2/19/1995 @ Canisius, L 1-8

1/31/1988 vs. Mercyhurst (at Geneseo, NY), W 6-3
11/5/1988 vs. Mercyhurst, L 2-6
12/18/1988 vs. Mercyhurst, L 3-5
1/14/1989 vs. Mercyhurst, L 2-9
1/6/1995 @ Mercyhurst, L 4-5
1/7/1996 @ Mercyhurst, L 4-13

May 24th TYT Status Check

We're officially into the heart of the offseason. For the men, the roster's out, the schedule's out, all that's left is four and a half months of waiting. For the women, there's still the matter of identifying those last few roster spots and the new assistant coach, but those are really the only major pieces of news expected anytime soon.

With that in mind, and since it's been a while since I've done a post like this, I figured I might as well share some of my plans for the immediate and slightly less immediate future.

The most pressing matter is determining how in the world I'm going to cover the coming season. I'm going to attend as many games as my time and budget allow (my preliminary plan has me going to 15 men's games and 10 women's games). If I'm not there, I'll be live-blogging whenever I can and recapping in case of conflicts (either with my time or between the men's and women's teams) or unavailable streams. The basic overarching reality to my plans: I'm one guy living in an apartment in Medina, OH. I attend grad school full time - which is nice in some ways, as I probably have more time to commit to TYT than I should - but it also means that I'm far from a wealthy individual. Essentially, I'm saying that I can promise you my best effort, this is a once-in-a-lifetime season, after all, but I can't promise that I'll be everywhere and do everything.

Anyway, once I have that all figured out, I'm going to share those plans with you as soon as possible, because I'd really enjoy your feedback. I've tried to plan attendance for most of the big games (on the men's side, for example, AIC, RIT, Air Force, Union, the Pittsburgh Invitational, Vermont, Michigan State and Alabama-Huntsville are all on my preliminary list), but obviously "big game" is subjective. For example, if you think I should sacrifice one of those - probably two, due to distance/cost - to go to Wisconsin, I'd like to hear about it.

Throughout the summer, I'll continue with Three Stars every Monday and Breakout Past every Thursday (conditional on my availability, as Breakout Past posts are usually pretty involved and I have an absolutely brutal class schedule, particularly for the second half of the summer). So two posts per week should be the baseline, although I somehow managed 61 total through last June, July and August. I'll drop a PIA Construction on you whenever I'm able to be in State College. And of course, I'll keep posting news as it happens, hopefully with your understanding that the bar for "news" is significantly lower in July than in January.

Last summer, I spent a lot of time working on historical aspects of the Icers program, and that's something I hope to be able to do this year as well. I've started working on my page devoted to past schedules and results again. Ideally, it will eventually include every game in the history of the Icers and the 1930s-1940s informal-turned-varsity team (it already has the latter), along with the coach, captain(s) and major accomplishments for each season, as well as many team pictures as I can find. I'm sure it will ultimately fall somewhere south of that standard, but hey, I'll give it a shot. But bear with me, because that page will look like a mess most of the time. It's a work in progress, and will probably remain so indefinitely.

Finally - and I don't say this enough - I sincerely want to thank each of you for your contributions to this blog, even if you just read it occasionally and have never even once interacted with me. When I started this thing, I really just expected to be talking to myself once or twice a week. It's become so much more than that, and that's mostly because of all of you.

Early on, before I had much of a readership, I actually said things like "I don’t aim to be purely a news source for Penn State hockey," and "I can pretty much promise that I won’t be the one to break the story." Really, I just planned on watching the games, saying "why does our power play suck?" somewhere around the following Tuesday, posting a picture of a hockey puck on Thursday, then repeating. Somewhere around 95 percent of what I do now was not part of my original plan. And to be frank, it's pretty hard to do all of this. It's ridiculously time-consuming and often expensive. It sounds terribly cheesy to say it, but you guys help motivate me to keep doing it. This is still fun to me (most of the time, I'll certainly admit to moments where I curse my responsibilities) and as long as I'm still having fun and still feel like I have something to offer to the Penn State hockey community, I'm going to keep at it.

I hope all of you have a fantastic summer! Don't hesitate to get/stay in touch, through Twitter, Facebook, or my personal email, which you can find by clicking my name in the right-hand column.

Doubleheader Delight

First off, some TYT news: I wasn't particularly fond of how I did the game recaps last year. If you're new here, basically, I'd watch both games of a weekend set, then try to write up my "weekend observations" (as I called it) sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning. A couple of problems with this approach:

1. Two separate games aren't always flowing with abundant common themes. If the Icers looked great in one game and horrible in the other (which seemed to happen a lot), I'd have no idea what to do. Do I take a positive or negative tone? Does it depend on larger context - how I usually tried to take it? I honestly have no idea.
2. I like doing things besides TYT. Frequently, these things happen on Saturday night. Often, I'd find myself showering during the first intermission of games, then walking the dog during the second so I could run out the door the second the game ended.
3. In light of #2, I'd find myself apologizing for late posts and thinking that I'm a horrible, horrible blogger for not even acknowledging that a game took place until Sunday evening in some cases.
4. I tried to tweet game updates, take notes for my posts and, you know, actually watch the game all at once. That's hard.

My brilliant antidote to most of this will come through live blogging, which will be the primary way I'll handle the games this year. Then, after they're over, I'll dress up the post with my score graphic, the links to recaps and the other extras customary on Weekend Observations posts (as they become available). When I'm not available to watch a game live, I'll suck it up and do it the old way. Unfortunately, most of you will probably find the women's game recaps sparse due to my out-of-state residence and the lack of an internet broadcast or other coverage beyond the Collegian (when they decide to write something) and the box scores on the ACHA site. Luckily, that issue largely goes away next season with the CHA-America One deal, and I'll keep my fingers crossed that the large amount of NCAA competition on the schedule this season alleviates the issue somehow as well.

With that out of the way, let's get on to the nuts and bolts of this weekend, a pretty exciting one as we get our first true public look at Transition Team 1.0 Friday at 6:30, followed by the Lady Icers home opener at 9:15 against Buffalo. The women follow up with an encore Saturday at 3:30. Steve and Barb Penstone are back for another season of outstanding UStream webcasts on the men's games, starting Friday and available here.

Justin Kirchhevel is about to be unleashed on the world outside of Alaska and South Dakota...so basically, the world.

On the men's side, the biggest story - other than the dire need for an adequate supply of roster cards - is the fact that Guy Gadowsky and his staff have stepped aside to do something more useful (recruiting) than the largely-for-the-fans Blue/White Game. In their place will be Icers alumni Mark Horgas and Rick O'Brien (notably, defenseman/human jackhammer Rich O'Brien's father) on one side and Cliff Graziano on the other. PennStateHockey.com had a nice three-way interview with the fill-in coaches this week, while View From the Booth checked in with the younger O'Brien to get his side of things.

After last Friday, one could hardly be blamed for wanting to see the Lady Icers in a more appropriate context against a fellow ACHA team, and against Buffalo, we'll get that chance. Last season, PSU topped the Freeze by 3-1 and 4-1 counts and in those games current Lady Icers Carly Szyszko (2), Katharine Gausseres, Allie Rothman, Denise Rohlik and Kirsten Evans all scored, while Katie Vaughan stopped 15 of 16 shots over 40 total minutes. They'll need more of that balanced effort to pick up the pair of wins that's come pretty regularly against UB in recent seasons, because things ratchet up again immediately afterward with a trip to NCAA Division III SUNY-Potsdam on October 21st and 22nd.

Vaughan and her teammates are expecting a bounce-back weekend.