Despite their disappointing weekend, the season is certainly still young, and the men's ice hockey team will look to bounce back and achieve its larger goals for the year.
Head Coach Brendan Whittet '94 talked of his hope for this year's team to bring back a hockey atmosphere similar to the one he experienced in his playing days on College Hill.
"I want us to have Brown pride and have this place rock like it did when I played here," he said in an interview prior to this weekend's games. "My vision is this place packed, with students hanging from the rafters and having a great time."
The team is young and, already in the first few games, freshmen are playing key roles. Dennis Robertson '14 leads the team in goals and shares starting defensive duties with Matt Wahl '14. Marco de Filippo Roia '14 has started two games as goalie and Garnet Hathaway '14, Mark Hourihan '14, and Jake Goldberg '14 have all scored points.
"It's a big class," Whittet said. "We expect a lot of them. They're coming into a situation where we're going to have to lean on them a little bit."
Brown ice hockey competes in the Eastern College Athletic Conference, a competitive league in which Harry Zolnierczyk '11 said the Bears "can't take any team lightly." While this is the case, several Ivy teams stand out on the schedule.
"Every league game is big," Zolnierczyk said. "But Cornell and Yale, they're always teams we want to knock off."
The team is in a period of transition, with 10 new faces and the loss of last season's scoring leader Aaron Volpatti '10, who was drafted by the Vancouver Canucks in this spring's National Hockey League draft. But Whittet said this has done nothing to diminish the squad's expectations for the season.
"Our goal each and every year is to win the national championship," Whittet said. "That's why we play the sport."
The Bears have nearly two weeks off before travelling to Colgate, Cornell, New Hampshire and Boston University in November. The next time the team will return to the Meehan will be for a weekend set against Union and Rensselaer on Dec. 3 and 4.
