After finishing 4-18-2 a year ago, the Wesleyan men’s hockey team will look to improve this season with experience, losing only one senior to graduation a year ago. The Cardinals will return 19 players who saw significant action last season. Still, it is a relatively young squad, with 20 underclassmen on the preseason roster.

Wesleyan will look to Captain Will Bennett ’07 to guide the fairly inexperienced team. Bennett, the 2003-2004 NESCAC rookie of the year, led the team in goals in his first two seasons. Taylor Evans ’07, who led the team in assists last season with 12, also returns as a key offensive weapon for the Cardinals.

The Cardinals will also count on stingy defense from Bill Fletcher ’06, Ed Klein ’08, Mike Barbera ’07, Greg Goldman ’08 and Brenton Stafford ’08.

In goal, Steve Binswanger ’06 and Dave Scardella ’07 shared time in 2004-05 and will be the front-runners again with support from Andrew Edge ’08 and newcomer Mike Palladino ’09.

To go with a very talented group of returnees, the Cardinals also have a strong freshman class who will compete for time. Newcomers expected to contribute this season are blue-liners Dallas Bossort ’09, Scott Burns ’09, Dusty Mones ’09 and Brent Winship ’09. Up front, J.J. Evans ’09, John Wierzba ’09, Brian Wieland ’09, and Brian Dew ’09 will look to help the team.

After finishing last year’s campaign last in the NESCAC, the Cardinals have plenty of room for improvement. With only one departure from last years squad, and a group of solid freshman, Wesleyan should be able to improve on last seasons disappointing showing.

The Cardinals open up this season’s campaign tonight when they travel to Amherst College. Last year, the Cardinals fell twice to Amherst by scores of 3-1 and 4-2. Tomorrow, Wesleyan travels to Hamilton College to face another NESCAC opponent where they lost 3-1 in last seasons only meeting between the two teams.