Youth trying to get Marauders back to the top

by Matthew Ondesko, Associate Editor

If you had one word to describe the St. Joseph’s Collegiate hockey team this year it would be – young.

In a league where it seems every team has at least a couple of sophomores and freshmen dotting the lineup, the Marauders have 13 underclassmen. And with youth comes growing pains and the Marauders have gone through some of those this early part of the season.

“This year we are extremely young,” stated St. Joe’s coach Richard Crozier. “This is all brand new to most of them.”

But, not the entire team is young and not the entire team is forgetting what happen to them in the playoffs - last year getting upset by Bishop Timon-St. Jude in the semifinals.

And while Crozier and his staff make so similarities to the two teams, he does say that this teams needs to be peaking at the right time.

Last year, the Marauders were peaking in December and January and their play spurred on talk that in his first year at the helm Crozier’s team was going to win the Catholic Federation title and Catholic states.

But, the team peaked too soon and the kids got a false sense that they might be a little better then they really were and Crozier knows for his team to be successful in February they need to be playing their best hockey in late January.

“For the most part we don’t make a lot of connections from this year’s team to last year’s team,” explained Crozier. “The major difference this year, for even me personally, is we just know that we need to be peaking at the right time. Last year we weren’t. We played our best hockey actually last year right at this point of the season. Last year we may have thought we were a little better than who we were and this team seems to be a little more grounded.”

Something this team has over last is depth. With all the newcomers, the Marauders don’t have that one true superstar, but they do have a lot of role players that can step in and get the job the done.

That was no more obvious then when they played Lancaster a couple of weeks ago. St. Joe’s lost two of its starters to injury early in the game and instead of panicking, Crozier sent out his 13^th and 14^th forwards.

That kind of depth could go a long way come playoff time.

“I would say that that has to be one of our strengths,” Crozier states. “While on most teams they have one strong line and maybe three average lines, I couldn’t tell you who my strongest line is right now. But, on any given night I know I can have a different first line. So, I think that is the major difference with our team.”

There were a lot of eyebrows raised last year when Crozier came over from Amherst where his teams struggled for years. But, in just a short amount of time those questions have been answered. His teams play hard and they play focused.

If his young players, including his young goaltenders, can mature throughout the season, the Marauders will be a team to recon with come playoff time once again.