Just minutes into Syracuse’s season opener, three freshman forwards poured onto the ice for the first shifts of their college careers.

“I went down and I basically iced the puck back down to our end and I was like, ‘Oh my God this better not be how the season is going to go,’” forward Alysha Burriss said.

It wasn’t.

The trio of Burriss, Stephanie Grossi and Emily Costales proved to be some of SU’s top players and helped guide the Orange (11-15-10, 8-6-6 College Hockey America) to a CHA conference championship game — a double-overtime loss to Rochester Institute of Technology on March 7.

Grossi won CHA Rookie of the Year and tied for the team-high in points with 29. Burriss tallied the second-most points on the team with 24, while Costales was one of eight players on the team not to have a negative plus-minus rating.

After having a taste of the conference championship game and successful individual seasons, the three freshmen are primed to return for their sophomore years in pursuit of SU’s first NCAA tournament appearance.

“All three of them did very well,” SU head coach Paul Flanagan said. “(Grossi) being one of the better freshmen in the country, that’s impressive … Burriss kept quietly chipping away … Emily scored a big goal in the playoffs and she complimented (her teammates).”

Flanagan ran with the all-freshmen line as his third option off the bench, until a few games in, when he quickly bumped all three players up to the second rotation.

Grossi led all CHA rookies in points and plus-minus rating during the regular season and Burriss was the only player on the team to record a hat trick when she did it against RIT on Dec. 6.

In Syracuse’s first win in 31 total tries against perennial CHA powerhouse Mercyhurst, Grossi provided two assists and Burriss netted one of her shots.

Costales scored SU’s only goal in the championship loss to RIT.

“I think that we’re all just getting started right now,” Costales said. “Next year we’ve got a lot of good things coming.”

Six players are graduating after this season, including Allie LaCombe, Kaillie Goodnough and Julie Knerr, who combined for 34 points.

Grossi said she plans to spend the offseason working on her shot and strength to improve her finishing ability. For Costales, the emphasis is on stick handling, she said.

Burriss wants to take aspects of her teammates’ play, like Knerr’s ability to block shots, and mold them into her own style of play.

“A lot of the focus is about losing the seniors and everyone’s been kind of upset about that just because they’re a big part of the team, but next year we’re expecting more,” Burriss said.

None of the freshman forwards expected to have such a big effect prior to the season, but by the end of the year, Grossi and Costales were starters and Burriss came in on the second line.

They fought off early-season jitters and adapted to the speed of Division I hockey to help Syracuse come within a goal of winning the conference championship.

Flanagan isn’t satisfied and wants the loss to drive the freshmen to try to push the team further next season. When he considers how well they performed this season, he’s excited for the next, he said.

Said Flanagan: “When you have three freshmen that can step in and put up some numbers and play a lot and do good things, you start to feel the future is pretty bright.”

Published on March 26, 2015 at 12:01 am

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