Author: Andrew Dellapina

Commodores Kick Off Semester With Throttling of Life University

Last season, the Vanderbilt Commodores gave up five goals in the third period in a 10-5 defeat at the hands of Life University. This year the club was determined to come out of the meeting with a different result. Thanks to a natural four goal hat trick by Ryan Doppelheuer and a four point night by Nick Honkala in his debut on the first line, the Commodores prevailed 10-2.

The game opened quickly, with Calen Leverant scoring fewer than four minutes into the game. Nick Honkala followed up with another goal only 29 seconds later, and a nifty dangle by Jack Gibbons put Vandy up 3-0 less than halfway through the first period. A costly defensive error led to a Life University goal, as Matt Reiman beat Ryan Kellenberger to cut the deficit to two. That was as close as the Running Eagles would make it the rest of the game, as Tucker Rhodes pounced on a loose puck with 26 seconds left in the period and rifled it past the goalie to give the Commodores a three goal lead which would increase as the game continued.

“I jumped on the ice and went straight to the puck,” said Rhodes, who made plays all over the ice and was given the team’s celebratory hat which is given to the hardest working player after each victory. “Maybe the goalie thought one of his defensemen would get to it, but it was just sitting in front of the net. I picked it up right in front and got a great chance on net. Thankfully it went in and it helped us head into the locker room strong.”

Although there was only one penalty committed by either team in the first period, the rest of the game featured a combined 24 penalty minutes. After Ryan Doppelheuer scored his first of the game early in the second, defenseman Andrew Dellapina was called for a double minor, giving Life its best opportunity to claw back into the game. Doppelheuer responded by scoring a shorthanded goal and then putting in two more before the period expired to net a natural four goal hat trick as well as give the Commodores a resounding 9-1 lead.

“He had a great game,” new linemate Nick Honkala said of Doppelheuer. “It’s just unbelievable how easy it is for him to put the puck in the net. I definitely felt some added pressure coming into this game with the way that our first line contributes in terms of scoring, but pretty early on I realized that playing with him and Johnny (Longman) is just so easy.”

The third period was largely uneventful, as each team scored a goal but did little to change the outcome of the game. Kellenberger stopped 32 of 34 saves in a strong performance, surrendering goals only to a breakaway opportunity as well as a miscommunication in front of the net. Longman scored his second of the game, adding to the first line’s total of seven for the night.

The game, being the first played at Ford Ice Center since October, kicked off a stretch of games the Commodores will play in their home rink. Next weekend the club plays Eastern Kentucky at 7:45 PM on Friday and 2:00 PM on Saturday before finishing up the regular season with four games against SEC East opponents Georgia and rival Tennessee.

New Players, New Locker Room and Newfound Success: Looking Back On Vanderbilt Hockey’s 2014 and Looking Ahead

As we ring in the New Year, let’s take a moment to look back on Vanderbilt Hockey’s 2014. It was a year filled with exciting new events and opportunities, an influx of young talent and, perhaps most importantly, newfound on-ice success.

Upon arriving back on campus in August, returning members of the club were introduced to some new faces. Included among the freshmen were a trio of sophomore transfers: goaltender Ryan Kellenberger, defenseman Bobby Mallon and forward Ryan Doppelheuer. Each transfer has been a huge boost to the club: Doppelheuer and Mallon lead forwards and defensemen, respectively, in points with 44 combined between them, while Kellenberger has started two-thirds of the team’s games in net and has posted a 2.72 goals against average and .917 save percentage. In addition, Mallon has been named Fundraising Chair for the upcoming season and has assumed the role of de facto DJ in the locker room, blasting tunes from the massive speaker he brings to all road trips.

“I think the pregame tunes really allow us to get out there and play to win,” said Mallon, a proud resident of Philadelphia, PA. “There’s nothing better than hearing our post game victory song (Right Back Where We Started From – Maxine Nightingale) after a nice win. In fact, the only reason that guys like (Matt) Neurohr and (Tucker) Rhodes try so hard is so that they can hear the song after the game.”

The team was in for yet another surprise only a few hours before the first game, as the players were treated to the official unveiling of the team’s brand new locker room, located at the Ford Ice Center in Antioch, TN. Ford Ice, which held its grand opening merely weeks earlier, is now the gold standard for ice rinks in the Southeastern United States. The facility features two full-size sheets as well as a concession stand fully loaded with food and drink, including beer. As for the locker room, it features twenty-one wooden stalls, complete with space to hang and store equipment as well as nameplates featuring each players’ name and number. The room also includes a speaker system, a high-definition television used for pre-game preparation as well as the occasional game of NHL on the Xbox 360, and a rug with Vanderbilt’s Star V logo in the center of the floor. Perhaps the coolest feature, however, is a Vanderbilt Hockey-centric touch: above the lockers, all the way around the room, hang Vanderbilt Hockey uniforms of the past and present, visually documenting each step in the club’s history dating back to its founding in 1976.

“It’s a huge step for the club, having a locker room for ourselves,” explained 2015 Vice President and Alternate Captain Jack Gibbons. “Not only does it elevate the level of the team but it’s also fun for the guys to have–it makes everyone a little more excited for games and practices. Having the jerseys hanging is a really cool touch; it’s a great way to see how far we’ve come as a club and a reminder of all the guys who came before us and built this club into what it is today.”

The night of the locker room’s unveiling was unfortunately spoiled by a season-opening loss to SEC East foe South Carolina which featured undisciplined play by the Vandy squad. However, the team refocused quickly and responded only two days later with a decisive 7-3 victory, one that would set the tone for the semester. The team then traveled to Georgia to take on another division rival, Florida, and returned home with another two victories and a commanding lead in the SEC East division.

As the calendar turned to October, the club prepared for its newest venture: the MAPCO College Hockey Scholar Shootout. The event was billed as a three-day tournament featuring six clubs from schools ranked in the Top 50 academically by US News & World Report and was designed to showcase the talents of well-rounded student-athletes. While Vanderbilt ran through the competition, outscoring its opponents by a total of 28-6 en route to winning the Shootout’s trophy (“The Davey”, named after the club’s founder), all teams involved had a great time and were afforded the opportunity to face off against some teams they might otherwise not have ever played against. Head Coach Thomas Bernstein had this to say about the development of the Scholar Shootout:

“I’m proud of all that the boys accomplished throughout the fall semester, in particular with the execution of the Scholar Shootout. The tournament encapsulates everything we love about Vanderbilt hockey—our creativity, our celebration of the intersection of academics and athletics, and of course our strong performance on the ice. Our culture is to build, and when our players look back on their Vanderbilt hockey experience in 25 years, I’d like to think they’ll be proud of building and participating in traditions such as the Scholar Shootout.”

The rest of the semester was a roller coaster ride, with close wins as well as devastating losses. Some of the highlights (and lowlights) include:

  • A crazy come-from-behind victory against Kennesaw State in the final home game of the semester
  • Two tough losses to the University of Alabama, the top team in the SECHC
  • A shootout victory against Georgia Tech
  • A late collapse against Ole Miss

The semester concluded with yet another milestone for the club: a Northeast road trip featuring games against two Division II clubs against whom the Commodores had never played before this year. The trip, a homecoming of sorts for a large portion of the team, began with a thrilling comeback win against a University of Virginia squad supported by a large and raucous home crowd and ended in the historic Hobey Baker Rink, as the club’s largest fan section of the season (largely fueled by parents) cheered the team on to a 4-2 victory over the Princeton Tigers.

The team finished the semester with an 11-4 record, a vast improvement over the previous season, and a #9 ranking in the ACHA’s second Division III regional rankings. If the Commodores can stay in the top 10, they will travel to Orlando in late February to take on some of the South’s best clubs with an opportunity to play in the Division III Nationals up for grabs.

The club will be saying goodbye to fifth-year senior Anthony Bilotta, who will return to the club in a coaching role next semester. While his spot on the first line will be difficult to fill, sophomore Alternate Captain John Longman, as well as the aforementioned Doppelheuer, will look to continue their scoring ways. The two combined for an extremely impressive 37 goals and 24 assists during the semester, leading the way for the Commodores.

Longman will also have added responsibility as he enters 2015 as the newest President of the Vanderbilt Ice Hockey Club. Longman said that he is “looking forward to sustaining our success from the first semester and I want to help lead the team to the next level both on and off the ice.”

Longman has big shoes to fill, but he has the benefit of working alongside his predecessor for the coming months. Greg Kirk, now a second-semester senior, has finished his time as club President and is looking forward to topping off his Vanderbilt Hockey career with some success.

“I am excited for the future of the club,” explained Kirk. “John, along with everyone else on the executive board, is really motivated and they are already making their own impact on the club and its continued growth.” As for his final semester, the Captain reflected and said that “it’s been a great past few seasons with the team and one of the best parts of my Vanderbilt experience. I’m looking forward to finishing the season strong and continuing our winning ways. The program has come a long way in my years here.”

Coach Bernstein summed up everything pretty well when discussing what he sees looking ahead to next semester. “I look forward to seeing how the players continue to build on last semester’s performance heading into the spring. We have a terrific group of young men on the roster. It should be a ton of fun to see what they can accomplish.”

The club has a lot to live up to, but there are certainly already positives to look forward to this coming year. From a seven-game homestand to finish out the regular season, to a spot in the SEC tournament and potentially even Regionals or Nationals, the 2015 iteration of the Vanderbilt Commodores looks poised for even more success.

Freshman Andrew Dellapina Recaps Georgia Tech, Previews Georgia

It’s no secret that the Vanderbilt Commodores ice hockey club hasn’t gotten off to the greatest start, with a 1-6-1 record through the first half of the semester. With one final game before fall break, the club was looking for something to build on with a stretch of SECHC games fast approaching.

Only a week removed from a last second heartbreaker to Indiana, the players and coaches both knew they were so close to a victory. That feeling only grew as the game began.

Georgia Tech played a very similar style to the Commodores. While most teams that Vanderbilt has faced off against so far have played a grind-it-out, hard-hitting style, GT was a skilled, opportunistic squad that generated its offense on one-off chances.

After a two goal lead evaporated by the end of the second period, the team was rattled. But the words spoken in the locker room seemed to focus the team around one goal: play simple hockey.

“Each individual player was trying to do too much,” noted Captain Anthony Bilotta. “I think we just needed to settle down and play a simpler game. Sometimes we get wrapped up in the game and think we have to try to make plays that aren’t there.”

As the team came out onto the ice for the third period, it was obvious the players had bought into the gameplan. The team came out flying, with countless scoring chances that simply wouldn’t go in. Finally, halfway through the period, freshman defenseman Andrew Dellapina intercepted a pass in the neutral zone and took it over the blue line. He made a move around one Georgia Tech player before getting knocked off of the puck by another. Sophomore transfer Bandar Alsaif locked on to the loose puck and fired a slapshot that beat the goalie glove side for a go-ahead goal.

“I saw an opportunity and jumped at it,” said Dellapina, who recorded his fifth assist of the season on the play. “I was able to get around one guy, but the second one flattened me. I looked up just in time to see Bandar wind up and unload an absolute bomb.”

Unfortunately, the bad luck that seems to have plagued the team reared its ugly head, with Georgia Tech capitalizing on a loose puck after a scramble in the corner to tie the game up with only 5 minutes left. The two teams continued to trade chances in the final five minutes as well as the ensuing overtime, but this game would require a shootout to determine the winner.

After an initial three rounds which couldn’t decide the game, Vanderbilt goaltender Bo Korpman, who stopped a whopping 42 shots during the game, was the victim of more bad luck as he stumbled backward in the middle of Georgia Tech’s shootout attempt, which gave the shooter an easy tap in for a goal. Bilotta was called upon to answer Georgia Tech’s goal, but his shot, which to most people in the building appeared to cross the goal line, was waved off by the official.

“It was pretty incredible,” said Coach Jon Holston after the game. “Everyone on the bench was in disbelief. I thought it was pretty obvious that it was a goal, but it was just the latest in a string of unlucky events.”

Although the ending took the air out of the team, everyone acknowledged that the final 25 minutes of hockey were some of the strongest the team had played all year. The plan was to enjoy fall break and come back ready to improve.

In the week and a half between the GT game and the next practice, some players relaxed. Others, like Junior Doug Kirkpatrick, kept the energy up. “I ran about 175 miles over fall break,” recalled Kirkpatrick, who always leads the rest of the team in the pre-game lap by at least 20 yards. “If I can’t go to sleep at 2 in the morning, I run a few miles. If I get a Computer Science problem wrong, I run a few miles. Pretty much the solution to any problem is to run a few miles.”

When the team returned to practice on Wednesday night, there was a new surprise waiting for them. Club President Jack Delehey, who skated in full equipment on Wednesday for the first time since his knee surgery, was waiting in the locker room with brand new equipment bags for each player. The bags featured each player’s name and number on one side, with the Vanderbilt logo and “Vanderbilt Hockey” on the other.

“The bags are fresh,” commented Tucker Rhodes, who was proclaimed by Coach Thomas Bernstein to be the team’s best passer on Wednesday night. “Everybody knows that 90% of hockey is looking good, so it’s nice to see that we’re stepping our game up.”

The aforementioned determination by Coach Bernstein was a result of passing being the focus of this week’s practice. He stood up in the stands, meticulously marking down each pass made by each player and whether or not it was caught by the recipient.

“Passing can open up our game in so many different ways,” said Coach Bernstein of the importance of connecting on a higher percentage of passing plays. “If we can make smarter passes in games and keep possession for longer, we’ll tire other teams out much more quickly and spend more time in the opposing team’s zone.”

The Commodores will look to put that theory to the test on Sunday as they take on the University of Georgia at 10:25 AM at A-Game Sportsplex in Franklin. With 8 games left in the first semester, 4 of which are League matchups.

“We’ve got six more league games to play,” advised Alternate Captain Jack Gibbons, “and there’s no reason to believe we can’t win all of them.”

Added freshman John Longman, who leads the team with 11 points in 8 games, “We’re on the verge of turning this thing around. We’ve just got to stay focused and play our game and these losses will turn into wins.”