Niagara men’s hockey opens regular season at home

NIAGARA UNIVERSITY ATHLETICS

• The Purple Eagles will open the 2018-19 season against the team that ended their 2017-18 campaign. The Yellow Jackets knocked Niagara out of the Atlantic Hockey playoffs in two games, 4-1 and 4-3 losses in Springfield, Mass.
• Over the last two seasons, AIC has gotten the better of Niagara, going 6-1-1 in eight total meetings.
• All 23 meetings between the two schools have taken place since Niagara joined the AHA for the 2010-11 season. The Purple Eagles hold a slim 12-10-1 lead in the head-to-head count.

• The Purple Eagles are coming off an exhibition game loss to the York Lions. Tanner Lomsnes and Nick Farmer lit the lamp in the 5-2 defeat.
• Niagara’s roster features 11 incoming freshmen including Dylan Mills, younger brother of sophomore forward Zach Mills. Other new faces in the locker room include Cole Weaver and Jordan Wishman, who were teammates for the 2017-18 season with the Dubuque Fighting Saints, and Zac Hermmann and Chris Harpur, who both grew up in the region. Herrmann is a native of Lancaster, New York while Harpur comes from the other side of the border, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
• Four of 2017-18’s top five scorers will all be back this season. Aside from Derian Plouffe, who led the team in goals (17) and points (35), Noah Delmas (4 G, 26 A), Lomsnes (13 G, 7 A), Eric Cooley (6 G, 14 A) and Johnny Curran (8 G, 6 A) will once again be donning the purple and white.
• Farmer was named the team’s captain in July. Head coach Jason Lammers pointed to the senior forward’s leadership as one of the primary reasons for the appointment.

• The Yellow Jackets are coming off a 3-1 loss to No. 5 Providence on Saturday, Oct. 6. ­AIC gave up two special teams goals late in the first period, then allowed an even-strength goal with 18 seconds remaining before the intermission. Halfway through the second, Tobias Fladeby broke through for the game’s final score.
• Brennan Kapcheck is among the notable returners for AIC. Kapcheck led the squad in assists (19) and points (26) last season and was second in plus-minus ( 6).
• Leading goaltender Stefano Durante is also back in yellow and black this year. In 28 games, Durante started 25 times, logging over 1585 minutes, a 2.27 goals-against average and a .911 save percentage. He did not earn a decision in two games, earning a 12-12-2 mark.
• AIC’s roster holds 31 total players, but zero from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Of the 14 Americans on American International College’s roster, the closest to home is Austin Albrecht, who hails from Flemington, NJ (206 miles away). Vitaliy Novytskyy, a native of Kharkiv, Ukraine (4766 miles, as the crow flies) is the furthest from home out of the team’s 17 international players.