2023-2024 boys ice hockey preview
Rebels hit reset button Okay, maybe not a full reset. The South Kingstown/ Westerly co-op boys ice hockey team has nine returning seniors and seven more juniors which will help the continuity. But there’s a new face behind the bench.
Anthony Simeone, a native of Cranston, gets his first head coaching job in the high school ranks and aims to pick up where previous coach Rick Angeli left off.
Angeli only coached the Rebels for two seasons, but they were successful ones. They won the Division III championship in the 20212022 season and made the playoffs in D-II last year with a 12-3-1 record but were upset in the first round by Nariho.
Simeone coached middle school hockey in Cranston and helped on the varsity side at Cranston West High School for the past two years. He’s also coached golf, basketball, baseball and esports in some capacity.
“All the sports I’ve coached in the past have been in the same city, so for me, this is a little bit of a different environment,” Simeone said. “My assistant, T.J. Lynch, who has been there the past few years, was great at filling me in with how the group of kids are and how the environment is. We’re a very upperclassman-heavy group and I know that they’re all very close and tight, so, it was just about me coming in and letting them know I want them to keep doing what they’re doing and I want to be a part of it.”
The elephant in the room is that the Rebels need to figure out how to replace the scoring that they lost to graduation a year ago. Two seniors at the time – Eison Nee and Cody Granville – accounted for a combined 37 of the Rebels’ 68 total goals.
The next closest scorer to Nee (23 goals, 10 assists) and Granville (14 goals, 18 assists) last year was senior Ethan Hood who scored eight goals and tallied six assists. A year older, Hood looks to take a step up as a leader of the attack.
Forwards Sean Dwyer and Michael Peters put up the fourth and fifth most points on the Rebels last year and figure to be near the top of the team in point production again.
“The goalscoring: that was one of the first conversions I had with this team,” Simeone said. “It’s about trying to fill that role. I believe we have the skill to do it, it’s just about putting the right lines together and going out and executing. These kids are very talented and very skilled.”
An intriguing player is Nolan Quirk, who transferred from Prout mid-season last year. He didn’t score a single point for Prout in 25 games across two years, but in just three games for the Rebels he scored two goals and three assists. He added two more goals in two playoff games.
In net, junior Lucas Gordan returns as the starter. He started every game last year and played to a 2.32 goals-against average. Junior Owen Lupoli will serve as a backup again, with freshman Zach Krueger joining the goalie group.
The team named three captains: Dwyer, alongside defensemen Shea Sullivan and Brad Wallin. They have two alternate captains: Hood as well as junior Garret Kirwin.
The Rebels open the season with a league match against Nariho on Saturday at
6:30 p.m. at Boss Arena. It’s a rematch from the previous two playoffs, although each team is under a new system.
New system, familiar face for Nariho
The Narragansett/Chariho Gulls co-op team has a new head coach as well: Dave Cannon. He comes over from South Kingstown where he served as an assistant for the past two seasons. Prior to that, he was the head coach of the South County Storm girls hockey team. He’s also a longtime teacher at Narragansett High School.
Cannon takes over a Nariho squad that went 10-51 in Division II last year under then-head coach Ryan Meade. They beat South Kingstown in the first round before falling to Portsmouth in the Frozen Four. The year before, they went 11-5-2 and made the D-III final but lost to SK.
“It’s really big shoes to fill from coach Ryan Meade,” Cannon said. “Right now it’s about getting in there and building off anything I can from Coach Meade. I’ve got two great, brand new assistants helping me in Austin Kearns and Shane Correia. We’re going to do everything we can to make the season memorable.”
As a co-op, Narragansett rosters 11 players and Chariho rosters 17. As per league rules you can only dress 20 per game, so eight players will be inactive. The decision on the eight, as well as the captaincy and lines, will be decided closer to opening night against SK on Saturday.
“You have to earn everything,” Cannon said.
The team’s top two goal scorers from last year, Jacob Correira and Sean Lyons, both graduated. Lyons scored 11 of the team’s 14 total power-play goals last season, so someone will need to replace that production.
Ethan Travis is a candidate to do so. Travis, a Narragansett sophomore, is coming off a freshman year in which he tallied 14 goals and 13 assists. Preston Abbott, a sophomore from Chariho, is another option for point production. He scored 10 goals and eight assists last year and figures to be near the top again.
Narragansett juniors Mason Kosiorek and Connor Gillmore both scored often last year and look to step into bigger roles.
As for the goaltenders, there is no everyday starter penciled in yet. Nariho rosters four strong options, all with chances to earn playing time. Three of them are seniors:
Mason Campbell, Ryan Moricas and Kaidan Wild. The other, Morgan Campbell is a sophomore and got playing time last year as a freshman.
“We’re going to be rock solid between the pipes,” Cannon said. “It’s a really great luxury to have. Many teams struggle to find one good goalie. We’ve got four.”
Crusaders look to build on momentum
Last season, behind a crop of young talent, Prout earned seven wins – their most since the 2015-2016 season – and reached the playoffs, ultimately losing to Cumberland.
While a few impact players graduated, the large majority of the team are still together and one year older. With nine seniors and 10 juniors, the Crusaders are in position to have their most successful season in a while.
“We’ve been on a steady incline the last couple of years,” longtime head coach John Gaffney said. “We’ve been blessed to have some guys decide to come here and be Crusaders when they could have gone elsewhere. But our mission and our objectives have always been the same: to work hard and do it the right way.”
The team is loaded with forward depth. The captain of the team is Derek Gesmondi, a forward who doesn’t score much, but according to Gaffney, provides everything you need leadership wise. He proved himself as an alternate captain last year in working toward this role.
Joining Gesmondi on what will likely be the top line are juniors Liam McIntosh and Aidan Forcier. Last year as a sophomore, Forcier led the Crusaders in both goals (11) and assists (7) and looks to continue to build his reputation as a powerplay scoring machine.
“I think the pressure is on for him but he’s up for the challenge,” Gaffney said. “He does magical things with the puck. He is a tough matchup for a lot of teams and he’s going to be difficult to handle, but that’s their problem, not ours.”
The defensemen are no slouches either. While the pairings aren’t set yet, seniors Jackson Reeves and Tyler Simo are both alternate captains and look to lead off the ice as well as from the blue line. Both of them broke out last year after slow starts early in their high school careers: Reeves being an occasional healthy scratch and playing on JV, and Simo transferring to Prout after receiving little playing time at his previous school.
In net, the Crusaders have two good options. Junior Angelo Evangelista returns after a phenomenal sophomore campaign in which he put up a .917 save percentage. The other goalie, Owen Glass, didn’t have quite as impressive numbers but the senior earned a spot as an alternate captain after an impressive offseason by Gaffney’s standards. The playing time for each will likely lean toward a split, with the starter being decided game-by-game based on certain matchups.
“We’re in a really good position with them,” Gaffney said about the goalie tandem. “We can throw either of them in there and be confident.”
Prout plays their first league match on Friday at the West Warwick Civic Center against the East Greenwich/Toll Gate co-op.
“We have high expectations this year, but at the same time it’s about the group dynamic,” Gaffney said. “This is such a good group to work with. The wins will only make it that much sweeter.”
It can only get better for the Skippers
Division I was a culture shock, to put it lightly.
After winning the Division II title in the 2021-2022 season, North Kingstown moved into the state’s top division and went 1-14-1 with a -73 goal differential. The only way it could get worse is if coach Cody Sellers wagers to throw himself in the Narragansett Bay a-la Hue Jackson and the Cleveland Browns.
There’s a path forward though. The Skippers are aware of what went wrong last year and how they can fix it. On the final day of last season, the team had a meeting and agreed to spend the offseason practicing with a much faster tempo.
“It was a serious jump to Division I. The biggest issue last year was adjusting to the speed and pace of play,” Sellers said. “This year we’re finally top heavy in that we’ve got nine seniors. We’re older; we’re much stronger. Most of all we’ve spent the offseason focusing on getting faster. If we’re going to catch up to the Division I teams, it’s a matter of how fast we can play the game. We’re looking to really increase that speed from last year.”
The Skippers have nine seniors and 10 juniors on the roster. On average, they’ll be older than most opponents. If they show the physicality that comes with age and combine it with new-found speed, it could translate to a much-improved forecheck.
The two captains are both seniors: forwards Jake Rodger and Quinn O’Connell.
“We pulled all the seniors aside and said, ‘This is still your team,’” Sellers said. “‘This is your fourth year,’ I told them. ‘How do you want to be remembered?’”
Rodger is the Skippers’ biggest goal-scoring threat. He scored seven of the team’s 17 total goals last year and if the team is better around him it will translate to more scoring opportunities. After Rodger, it remains to be seen who else can hit the back of the net.
NK played a injury fund game against Nariho on Dec. 2, a 2-2 tie, where Rodger scored one goal and junior Charlie Randall scored the other. Randall scored just one goal last season but could be a player to break out this year.
On defense, senior Jake Horsman is a player to watch as someone who brings a lot of physicality to the game. Horsman led the league in penalty minutes last season with 42, but Sellers notes him as someone who has matured and is ready to lead by example.
Horsman is one of many Skippers who will try to help lower the goals against average of starting goalie Ben Davis, who allowed a 5.35 GAA last season on 536 total shots on net in 16 games. Now as a junior, it’s still his crease.
“Poor kid, he got shelled with like 50 shots per game,” Sellers said. “We pulled him aside after the year and said, ‘Hey, you have the most saves in Division I.’”
Behind Davis at goalie is fellow junior Christian Matthis.
The Skippers are still in rebuild mode, just trying to find their footing in the top division. It’s not a far-fetched goal to sneak into the playoffs, as 10 of the 12 teams make it. If they do that, it could build momentum for the program.
At the same time, the Skippers only roster five sophomores and three freshmen, so they need to ensure they’re properly developing them.
“It was so cool to see a public school [ NK] defeat a private school [La Salle] in the football playoffs and then battle in the finals,” Sellers said. “We want to work on creating a legacy like that for ourselves.”
Things certainly won’t start out easy this year for NK. They play their first league match on Tuesday against Bishop Hendricken at Thayer Arena in Warwick, a team that last year went 141-1 and won the state title.