2022-23 Men's Hockey Season Preview
10/27/2022
The Brown Bears drop the puck for the program’s 97th season of competition Saturday night at Ingalls Rink against the Yale Bulldogs. The Bears and Bulldogs open the season Saturday night in New Haven, Connecticut before playing on Sunday afternoon at Meehan Auditorium to close the season series.
The Bears are scheduled to play 29 games in the 118-day regular season with 22 ECAC conference games and seven non-conference contests.
Brown looks to improve in its ninth-place ECAC finish a season ago following the canceled 2020-21 season. Head coach Brendan Whittet ’94, in his 14th season at the helm of the program, led the Bears to a 5-5-0 Ivy League finish in 2021-22, marking just the 17th time in the last 50 seasons a Bruno squad finished .500 or better against Ivy foes.
Brown begins the season with eight straight conference matchups before five straight non-conference games beginning around Thanksgiving.
Against regional foes, Brown takes on Holy Cross on Friday, Nov. 25, Providence on Saturday, Nov. 26, and Boston College on Saturday, Nov. 29. All three games are in Providence with the games against the Crusaders and Eagles at Meehan Auditorium.
The Bears return from the holiday break to take on a pair of Hockey East opponents to close out the non-conference slate, beginning with a game at UMass on January 3 against the 2021 National Champions. On January 7, Brown heads to North Andover, Massachusetts to take on the Merrimack Warriors and graduate transfer Tristan Crozier.
An extended home break welcomes the Bears following the non-conference finales with six home games over four weekends.
Brown closes the regular season at home against Cornell (Feb. 24) and Colgate (Feb. 25).
Click here to view the complete 2022-23 schedule.
The Bears finished ninth in the ECAC standings a season ago, ultimately falling to the eighth-seeded St. Lawrence Saints in the three-game quarterfinal series. Brown was just one league point behind the Saints and two points behind Union in seventh.
The 2021-22 season was extremely tight in the standings as just nine points separated sixth-place RPI from last-place Yale.
Quinnipiac, the 2021-22 regular season champions, was selected as the 2022-23 preseason favorite in the ECAC Preseason Coaches’ Poll.
After serving as an assistant captain as a junior a season ago, defenseman Luke Krys is the 111th Bear in program history named captain.
Joining Krys with letters are senior defenseman Samuli Niinisaari and junior forward Jordan Tonelli, both named assistant captains in 2022-23.
Brown’s forward unit features 12 returners and five newcomers, split between four freshmen and one transfer.
The group will have to replace the production of four seniors from a season ago: Tristan Crozier (6-9-15), Jake Harris (3-7-10), Justin Jallen (10-7-17), and Michael Maloney (10-3-13). Those four accounted for more than half of Brown’s goals in 2021-22 and 40% of the team’s point production.
Junior transfer Gavin Puskar joins the Bruno squad after two seasons with UConn in the Hockey East. Puskar is joined by freshmen Dean Bauchiero, Ryan Bottrill, Ryan Shostak, and Zackary Tonelli, younger brother to assistant captain Jordan.
The Bears have 10 defensemen listed on the 2022-23 roster with eight Bears returning from a season ago. All-Ivy defensemen Luke Krys and Samuli Niinisaari headline the returners alongside seniors Luke Albert and James Crossman and sophomores Tony Andreozzi, Brett Bliss, Spence Evans, and Jackson Munro.
Newcomers Harry Meirowitz and Nick Traggio will vie for ice time in a loaded defensive corps, Traggio is the son of Brown Hall-of-Fame inductee Mike Traggio ’95, who as an All-ECAC defenseman as a senior in 1994-95.
Sophomore Mathieu Caron is the lone netminder to return from the 2021-22 squad. The Abbottsford, British Columbia native posted a 2.74 goals against average and .911 save percentage in 24 starts a season ago. Caron started the final 13 games for the Bears.
Notably, Caron posted consecutive shutouts against Harvard and Dartmouth a season ago at Meehan Auditorium, becoming the third Brown goalie since 2000 to record consecutive shutouts (Yann Danis ’04; Mike Clemente ’12).
Joining Caron on the 2022-23 roster are senior Adam Fogel and freshman Jacob Zacharewicz.
