 For the first time in six seasons, the BSU men's hockey team posted a winning record last year. However, the team made an early exit from the WCHA tournament, losing to Bowling Green in the first round. Now the Beavers are back and feeling like they have something to prove. BSU finished last season one game over 500 with a 17-16-6 record. But this season the Beavers were still picked to finish sixth in the WCHA. Obviously you want to be picked higher, that's for sure. Don't have a lot of respect from everyone else, I guess you could say, but we need to gain that respect. Despite the feeling of everyone outside the program, head coach Tom Saratori and the team have nothing but confidence in their group. I like our team a lot right now and I think probably a lot of teams do, but I like the ingredients that we have. We have the talent and we work hard, we work hard in the gym, we work hard on the ice and I think it all translates to the game. The Beavers return 22 players from last year's team, which has everyone on this year's team dreaming big. We like our team, again we think that we have the ability of winning a lot of games. Right now our expectations are win the league, win the conference and keep rolling from there and ultimately win the championship. And while there are still some questions within the Beavers' decor. We're still relatively young right there with six freshmen and sophomores, but I really like where our guys are at right now. We might be a little young, we might be a little inexperienced on the back line, but we're farther along than I thought we would be a month ago, that's for sure. With 16 forwards and four experienced goalies, the team is going to rely on their offense and play between the pipes to get them through the season. The forward group is strong coming back. We have good teams, speed up front, we have a good skill level. I think we have two to three lines that can score. As far as our goal tending goes, we're very experienced in that position. We're great in the nets, we've got four capable goalies. Any one of those guys could start in any program, so I feel pretty confident in our team going forward. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.