10/13/2022 other sports Edit

No. 20 ranked Penn State Hockey ready to take on Mercyhurst

Kathryn Brody • Happy Valley Insider

Staff Writer

I am a Journalism major at Pennsylvania State University and cover a few different Penn State teams.

No. 20 Penn State hockey program is looking to maintain their hot start with a home-and-home series against the Mercyhurst Lakers. The blue and white have not faced Mercyhurst since 2017. The Lakers finished seventh in the Atlantic Hockey conference last year going 11-22-3.

Mercyhurst comes into this series 0-4, as the Lakers opened their season against the No. 11 Ohio State where they were swept, but they kept the competition close. In their second series they faced off against Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, finishing with a 6-3 loss in game one and a 3-2 overtime loss in game two.

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Now for the Nittany Lions, they will need to contain forwards Carson Briere and Mickey Burns as they both lead the Lakers with three points each so far this season.

While Mercyhurst has not come out on top yet this season, the Nittany Lions will not be looking at this series as an easy one.

“They played Ohio State very tough,” head coach Guy Gadowsky said. “We certainly are going to have to take what we learned with Canisius and apply it. We can't just go in there thinking it will be a workout on our cardio.”

Even though Penn State is off to a hot start to the season after sweeping Canisius, the guys still feel like there is a lot to improve.

“We need to continue shooting. We definitely need to stay out of the box for more five-on-five [play].” Ryan Kirwan said.

Four of the seven goals Canisius scored in the previous series came on power plays, and one of those was even on a two-man advantage. So staying out of the box is going to be important for the Nittany Lions to succeed against the Lakers.

The top line of Kirwan, Ture Linden and Kevin Wall combined for 15 points in series one and Kirwan earned the Big Ten third star of the week for his outstanding performance last weekend. Look for him to try and take that performance and mimic it again this weekend.

Now as for the second line consisting of Connor MacEachern, Connor McMenamin, and Ashton Calder, they also combined for seven total points as well. Offering

Even though it has only been one series, the team is feeling the immediate impact of the two transfer students, making big impacts on the two top lines as Gadowsky hoped.

“For Linden, we needed a guy to win faceoffs specifically on the right-hand side,” Gadowsky said.“He brought that extremely well. The way he set up plays and his goal was fantastic.”

The Nittany Lions' blue line is also off to a strong start. Carter Schade and Jimmy Dowd Jr. combined for four points and seven blocked shots.

The series kicks off this Thursday night, October 13th as puck drop will take place at 7pm ET inside of Pegula Ice Arena.