2024-2025 Season - Providence College

[NEW Friar]

Exciting new season coming up soon. Looks like a very good team with solid additions from the portal combined with a skilled group of new players. Hope Schneider Arena will be rocking this season.

[PC91]

Looking forward to the start of the season. I agree that this looks like a solid team and they should compete for a spot in the top 3 or 4.

[NEW Friar]

First live action coming up on Saturday away against Union. It's only an exhibition game but the game might provide some insights into pairings and etc., hopefully while avoiding injuries to key players. Based on a few tweets by Mark Divver, he seems very impressed with the team during practice and particularly how good Trevor Connelly looks. The Hockey East preview on CHN concluded that it would not be a big surprise to see PC at the top of the standings at the end of the year. Another observation was that PC could have the best recruiting class in the country. Listened to the first radio broadcast of the Nate Leaman show a couple of weeks ago - interesting to hear his take on the new players and how difficult it might be to break into the starting lineup. A new kind of angle on these roster decisions seems to be the pressure to play freshmen, (in light of the portal), vs the need for some players to mature into that role given the speed and talent level in Hockey East and D1 hockey in general. Another added coaching challenge to be sure. Very optimistic at this juncture, hope fan support at home will help us steal some games too.

Don't know if scheduling this game at Union is connected at all to the 10th anniversary of their National Championship in 2014, but Nate Leaman was due a lot of credit for the development of the culture of the program and recruitment of the players that accomplished that distinctive achievement. He then of course went on to duplicate this at PC the next year.

Hope this season will be a big step toward bringing back the glory years again. Go PC!

[PaulKorea]

Exciting new season coming up soon. Looks like a very good team with solid additions from the portal combined with a skilled group of new players. Hope Schneider Arena will be rocking this season.

Hey thanks for posting in the other thread (I think I got it deleted) about this one. First one I saw come up was the 23-24 one when I browsed.

[NEW Friar]

Watched the Union game on ESPN +. The game wasn’t close, but it was good to get real game action in ahead of a challenging opponent next week in North Dakota. That is a very good team who play in a packed loud arena so a big early test coming up.

Union looked pretty good to me, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a top half finish in the ECAC.

Unfortunately Graham Gamache took a surprise high hit in the 3rd and layed on the ice while play continued because the refs called a delayed penalty - ordinarily that is a plus for the team going on the power play, but in this case PC had to have a player help him leave the ice as he really seemed to badly need being attended to by the trainer. The coaches gave the refs a piece of their minds for not calling the play dead in this case. Hope he is not seriously injured, but it didn’t look good live.

Most of the points generated today were from the co-captains and the three high draft picks, Connelly, Sawyer & Mustard. So far, so good.

[pc88]

We not doing this thread this year? 3 games in and nothing.....

[Charles48]

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[NEW Friar]

Very nice weekend for PC. ASU looked like a good team but our goalies and D men stifled their best players. Both goalies played equally well each game I thought so that is an unusual situation and I hope the competition benefits the team going forward. Thought for sure Tanner Adams would be the Hockey East player of the week after his hat trick on Friday, (and I thought an assist on goal 1 Saturday), but a Maine player picked up that award with 5 assists for the weekend. Seems a little out of balance so I don’t get that choice. Losing Trevor Connelly late in game 1 was very unfortunate. He appears to be a game changer and I hope he will be back soon. His injury looked like a sprain and those can be time consuming to get through in my experience. Luckily he is young so hopefully heals quickly, great player for us so hope for a quick return to the line up. Logan Will was injured in game 2, did not see what happened, but he didn’t return to the game. His goal in game 1 was a pro level snipe just through the smallest opening the goalie provided in the upper corner of the net, that was impressive. D corp looked really good both games. Like what I have seen so far, go Friars!

[PC91]

I remember when the PC thread was alive and well. Thank you to the few of you who are trying to keep it going. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or if I used to post more because the team wasn't well coached and the whole program needed to be fixed (or recently being frustrated that PC was in the top 15 all last season and still missed out on the NC$$s) but I'm hoping to shake off the rust and join you stalwart souls again from time to time, when possible.
I didn't like seeing the Friars give up a goal with time running out in the 3rd period Friday but they won in OT. I really enjoyed watching PC's effort to come back on Saturday night and get points in the shootout. I think Vermont is better than a lot of pundits and fans think and they have a few players that I would be high on if I were a Catamounts fan. I think things are on the come up in Burlington.

[NEW Friar]

Thanks PC91 for contributing the observations on the games last weekend. Winning game one in OT was a high character come back with the disappointing last minute tying goal by VT. In OT our 3X3 play was outstanding, I don’t think the puck got into our zone. VT looked much better and highly motivated in the second game and I thought the game slipped away when they went up by 2 with about 7 minutes left. PC’s comeback and a tying goal by Nick Poison with 36 seconds left showed great veteran leadership, he refused to lose. Malinowski is off to a good start and came through nicely in the shoot out. The current point distribution rule with both teams getting a point when a game goes to OT and the 3rd point awarded to the team that wins in OT or via the shoot out makes the outcome seem equivalent regardless of how you get point 3, but winning in OT feels better to me.

On to NH this weekend with a home and away, hope to see students in attendance Friday as that energy makes a difference. Would like to see Connelly healthy and back in the lineup, we’ll see. Tough start to his college career, glad PC is more than hanging in there while he heals up.

[BC/HE]

BC fan here. I was wondering what PC fans have to say about BC picking up Brady Berard from the portal. He fills in admirably on BC's 4th line and has been great on the Penalty kill. That was a need for BC after losing Jamie Armstrong to graduation. BC doesn't need any other type forwards other than his style which is the veteran solid defensive forward.

[NEW Friar]

Glad that you are pleased with Brady’s play. Good energy player. Thought we would see him sign up with Stonehill where his dad went to be head coach, so the BC pickup was unexpected. I hear he wanted to be in Boston, but surprised they wanted him given some glaring weaknesses in his game. Sometimes a change in scenery is good for a player. Let us know if you still have good vibes at the end of the year.

[NEW Friar]

What a HE weekend for PC. Perfect 1st period last night, and a great performance by our goalie tonight. The hockey gods were with us this weekend for sure. Really good team with the potential to get better as the season progresses.

Are there any contributors out there to pitch in and make this site more interesting?

[PaulKorea]

PK has just been doing non-hockey things but I like what I'm seeing with Will Elger. Adding a reliable second goaltender for the year is great for the team. My concern is what becomes of the crease next year if Svedeback may also be gone. Going to have to recruit more or hit the portal to solve that problem.

Having depth like they do is a good problem to have. Being able to look as sharp as they have at times, despite the injury to Connelly, was just a matter of time with freshmen and grad players being slotted in working. I wasn't sure what we were getting in O'Reilly or Logan Will but they have been smart additions that more than make up for losing Schimek. About him, Tanner has already become the player I expected Schimek to be. I think of if he didn't transfer out that the team wouldn't have had these opportunities to hit the portal and improve like they did. When #16 returns I wonder who gets removed from the lineup as a regular. Clark, maybe? I do like the physicality of the team this year as well, and watching the freshmen get their minutes and grow as players. PK out.

[NEW Friar]

Thanks for posting PK, I guess time off from hockey is OK, it is a long season.

Also very pleased with Will Elger, looks like a solid high skill player, good recruiting by PC to find this guy. Same with O'Reilly and Will - both guys know what they are doing and have been big contributors so far. The team depth is impressive, when Connelly comes back it will be tough to sit somebody else. Glad they have a bigger roster this year to provide more options for the injury situations that are unavoidable in this sport, especially when the guys on the bench are so good. Really like the D corp, the veterans have improved and are really playing well and the new guys are great too, especially Machu. Sounds like they got a very favorable ruling on eligibility from the NCAA on him since he only missed one game and the loss of eligibility was backloaded, hope he stays for all three years he was given.

Would have liked to have Schimek return, but he is not missed as much as I feared - like your glass half full on that one. He looked like one of, if not the best ASU player, but at least a pretty nice trade-off since O'Reilly is playing so well for us and he came from ASU.

I have said this before, but I don't get the lack of student turn out. I realize PC is primarily a basketball crazy school, but they have a great hockey team to root for, the arena is walkable, and student seats are very good. Need better marketing to liven things up at Schneider in my opinion. Students are missing a great spectator sport and I bet the players would love the feedback for their efforts from their peers. It is remarkable that the team can do as well as they do given that missing ingredient.

On to Northeastern next weekend with another home and away. Hope we keep up the good work.