The Lions gathered for media day on Saturday, after a strong showing at the team training camp. Donning big smiles and the new red jerseys the team added this season. Originally started in 1930, and running through 1942 as a Varsity offseason sport for Loyola University football players (they were from Minnesota mostly), and with a two year stint in the late 90’s, LMU Hockey was reborn in 2005, and Celebrating our Twentieth Year.
Our M2 team, which finished as the 6th Ranked team in the ACHA West last season, and returning a large majority of that team, is looking forward to a tougher than ever schedule and has sights on another Regionals trip as a start, not a finishing goal. Leading scorer Hawthorne returns to LMU in a graduate program, and to the team. Along with rising sophomore and leading scorer Skenderian, who is looking to build on his impressive rookie year. The M2 Lions added eight new players to the roster, Peter Lewis, Josh Elias, Christian Worrell, Wyatt Wong, Charles Wojcik, Troy Negus, Micah Kawai and Zephyr Tangri.
The M2 Lions season sees them competing in the revamped WCHC, where they look to win a title in a talented conference. Along with another visit to the Beehive Classic in Utah in November, where the Lions will face three of the four teams that went to Nationals last season from the ACHA West. And then the Lions will travel for the first time to the Big Mountain Classic in January, facing teams from all regions of the ACHA in this fun Showcase.
Meanwhile, our sophomore season of the new M3 team sees big changes. The WCHC conference revamp sees a new WCHC M3 conference, with 12 teams. A mixture of WCHC M2 teams moving down, M3 teams from the AZ schools and a few new teams, the winner of the WCHC M3 conference has the inside track on an autobid to ACHA M3 Nationals. ASU enters the season as a favorite to win, as the highest ranked team entering from last season.
But the M3 Lions have aspirations of their own, with ten new players joining the returning first season squad. Joseph Oxenreider, Marc Baldwin, Billy Kurzius, Amaan Aga, Ethan Han, Carson Dyck, Aidan Pi-Keesee, Victor Colaco, Ryan Atwell and Peter Caloyeras bring a new hope with them, and bring the M3 team roster to 24 for their second season. The infusion of freshman talent, that many pushed toward a spot on the highly competitive M2 team, means a great season is in store for the M3 Lions.
The M3 Lions have twelve conference games in the first M3 WCHC season, and look to secure a spot in that playoffs and to push for the first ever conference title. On top of those games, the Lions are traveling to Chicago in January to play in the Northwestern Showcase, three games including an outdoor game against the host school.