The Bowling Green hockey team and third year head coach Scott Paluch are coming off a year that saw hope for the future. After finishing the second half of the season with the fourth best league record and having a winning home record (7-6-5), the team is excited about starting the upcoming season.

“I’m very excited with all the guys we have coming back,” senior tri-captain Alex Rogosheske said. “Especially with Siggy in goal and all the senior leadership that we have, Ryan Minnabarriet and Steve Brudzewski coming back…very excited about everybody. I think we’re a really tight team which is different from a year ago or two years ago and so it’ll be fun to get out there and actually start playing real games.”

Last season, the Falcons finished 11-18-9 overall and had a Central Collegiate Hockey Association record of 9-13-6. The team finished ninth in the final CCHA standings after finishing 11 the year before.

Their season was then ended in two straight games at Ohio State in the first round of the CCHA tournament (3-2, 5-2).

This season, the Falcons will return 20 lettermen and welcome in nine newcomers from a team that only lost five players.

Official team practices began this past weekend.

The team opened their practice this season with a “Falcon Challenge” where the team was split into two teams and played a series of four games.

During those four games, coach Paluch has seen improvement in the overall speed and offensive skill of his team. “The first thing that jumps out is the quickness to loose pucks,” Paluch said. “We really have a deeper group in terms of overall team quickness, up front and on defense.”

“We’ve seen a real good pace to our early practices and we have seen scoring chances and we have seen goals,” Paluch said. “We’ve had a little more offensive flare early on.”

Returning for the Falcons up front are forwards Brudzewski, tri-captain Minnabarriet, Rogosheske, Bryan Dobek, James Unger, Mark Voakes, Ryan Barnett, Rich Meloche, Mike Falk, Brett Pilkington, Dana Hanson and Brandon Piersol.

On defense they return Don Morrison, Chris Pedota, Jeremy Bronson, Taylor Christie, Jon Sitko and Jonathan Sigalet.

In the net, All-American candidate and tri-captain Jordan Sigalet, who enters his final collegiate season as the all-time leader at BG with a .914 career save percentage also returns.

Behind Sigalet, goaltenders Bob Frazee and Keith Van Gels return, while the team welcomes new goaltender Jon Horrell.

Horrell, a transfer from the University of Findlay, was known for his big play last season where his team won in an upset at Michigan State.

“We actually have four goalies right now on our group and we’ve seen some pretty good saves out of all of them,” Paluch said. “We’ve been really pleased with the play of all the goalies. I think they’ve all been challenged throughout the games and really to a man, they’ve played pretty well.”

The newcomers to this year’s team are freshmen forwards Jonathan Matsumoto, Jon Erickson, Derek Whitmore, Ben Geelan, John Mazzei and Alex Foster. Then on defense they welcome in Mike Hodgson and Mike Nesdill.

Matsumoto and Hodgson came into practice ranked on the Inside College Hockey website as two of the top freshman in the country. The overall rank of the class was 14 on the INCH list.

“All of them have shown they can play,” Rogosheske said. “They’re going to be top players.”

BG will get an extended break this year as the team will practice for three weeks before starting their season at Union on October 22-23 in a two game non-conference series.

“It’s great, especially with so many more players,” Paluch said. “It gives us a real good chance to teach the game from a systems standpoint, and it gets our players together more from a team concept. It’s a huge, huge edge for us to be real close as a team.”

Fans will be able to get their first look at the team tomorrow night in the annual “Falcon Face-off” at 4 p.m. at the BG Ice Arena. Where the team will be broken down into two teams and will have a skills competition during the intermission.

The Falcons will then take on the University of Windsor in exhibition play next Friday at 7:05 p.m. at the BG Ice Arena to end their preseason schedule.