Wesleyan men’s hockey co-captain Keith Buehler ’14 is one of 18 Cardinals still remaining from Wesleyan’s miraculous, eight-over-one seed victory against Hamilton in the NESCAC tournament in 2011. He is hopeful that the 2012-13 team will again summon up the energy from two years ago and bring another playoff victory to the school.
“[We hope to] recapture that energy,” Buehler said. “Through that whole excitement, the energy of being able to upset, maybe we can be the higher seed at home and keep that excitement to get our first ever NESCAC tournament win at home.”
The Cardinals were just one goal away from beating third-seeded Middlebury last season, and their team has only improved since then.
“We only lost two seniors, so there aren’t a lot of new faces around,” Buehler said.
Despite also losing NESCAC-leading scorer Nik Tosiopolous as a transfer, Buehler is confident that Tosiopolous’ void will be easily filled.
“I honestly don’t think it’s going to be that big of an issue,” Buehler said. “We have plenty of guys that can step in and score more goals, everyone’s going to get more playing time, and it’ll just result in more chances and more goals for everyone else.”
Buehler looks to capitalize on many of Wesleyan’s strengths from last year. Particularly important among these are the team’s quickness, physicality, and superior goaltenting.
“Our biggest advantage is our team speed,” Buehler said. We’re a really fast team; we’re good at playing physical. We’ve [also] got… two senior goaltenders [who] are solid and can jump in for us.”
He also emphasized that team experience is a major asset.
“We have seen other schools; we know what other teams have,” he said, “you feel secure out there with the 12 seniors because they’ve been there before.”
Buehler said that after the team took a NESCAC-leading 398 penalty minutes, “other teams might try to exploit the amount of penalties that we get.” However, he claims that the team has recognized and begun to address the issue.
“We can definitely just play smarter, more within ourselves, play within our skill sets, and not try to do too much,” he said. We need to rely on each other, because there’s no need to take a penalty if there’s another guy back there. If you have backup, there’s no reason to take a penalty.”
According to Buehler, the importance of avoiding these penalties should not be understated.
“It’s not worth it to sacrifice [that time in the penalty box] because there are ways to play physical without taking penalties, which is how we want to play,” he said. We don’t want to be out there trying to take people’s heads off, taking penalties. There’s a way to be physical while playing within the rules.”
Wesleyan is hopeful that it will be able to make the necessary adjustments in time for its first contest of the season, an away game versus NESCAC competitor Conn College on Friday, Nov. 16.