Grad transfers bring speed, experience to Sacred Heart
BRIDGEPORT — They’re here for graduate programs right along the lines of their career plans or taking a turn in a different direction. They have come from colleges as farflung as Colorado College and, um, Yale.
College hockey’s funky COVID-19 summer brought four graduate transfers to Sacred Heart, more grad transfers than the Pioneers have freshmen. They’re at the core of the team’s hopes at a long playoff run, the kind at which the Pioneers were denied a chance in 2020.
“It was a little tough because there were about 300 guys in the transfer portal,” said forward Dakota Raabe, a California native who’d played at Michigan. “A lot of these schools, you know, they’re scrambling to find guys; there’s a lot of spots already taken up.
“C.J. (Marottolo, Sacred Heart’s coach) was actually one of the first coaches to reach out to me . ... He really wanted me here, and that was something I needed.”
The group that was already here and the incoming group — the grad transfers also include defenseman Rourke Russell out of Miami (Ohio) and forwards Dante Palecco of Yale and Troy Conzo from Colorado College — didn’t hurt Raabe’s decision.
They’re rooming together, in fact.
“I got a couple calls from different schools and stuff but what attracted me here was just the opportunity they had here,” Russell said after practice at the Wonderland of Ice. “The coaching
staff and the players that they had on the roster, I kind of just took everything in and that’s what made me decide to come here.”
Raabe played with Greenwich’s Strauss Mann at Michigan and had been to the area a bit. Conzo comes from Long Island.
“It definitely helps with the transition,” he said. “Coming from a school that I was four and a half hours to get home, it’s definitely nice to finally be able to play somewhere close to home.”
The season opens Saturday at 4 p.m. at the XL Center against UConn. The Pioneers won’t play a home game until Oct. 29-30 and then not again until New Year’s Day in their last full season at Webster Bank Arena before moving home to the school’s West Campus into the new Martire Family Arena on Jan. 14, 2023.
Russell’s skating is a big addition to the blue line, Marottolo said, and Raabe’s speed is a key attribute. Conzo will help them improve on faceoffs.
“We like the team we’ve
put down on paper right now. My two assistants did a terrific job of identifying, watching film on all these guys,” Marottolo said. “We feel good about all the guys that we brought in.”
Junior forward Tim Clifton said building team chemistry has been a key team focus.
“We actually we orchestrated a golf event this past weekend which we got the team involved: We cleaned up the rivers of Great River Golf Club, and we ended up playing a nine-hole tournament, which was a lot of fun,” Clifton said.
In that and other events, he said, “it was a good chance for everyone to really get to know each other really have conversations away from the rink. I feel it’s important that you have conversations with new guys that don’t necessarily always involve hockey, you know, just getting to know people off the ice which is really important because I think that bond you have off the ice really translates on the ice.”