Mercyhurst University ACHA Hockey Powered by Goalline Sports Administration Software

D1 Team History


                      
The Early Beginnings of a Program (1988-1991)

The first hockey at Mercyhurst was Club Hockey. In November of 1986, Mercyhurst fielded a hockey team in the Erie Industrial League. The team would play 24 games in the non-checking league, with all of their games played at the Erie Civic Center. They shared the home of the Erie Blades, the minor league professional hockey team in the East Coast Hockey League. Robert Cisek started the program and coached it that first year, and John Leisering would take the team from a men’s league to NCAA Division III. Following a year under Fred Lane, Rick Gotkin would be hired as head coach and the team would evolve into the NCAA DI team playing at the University today.
 
Club hockey did not disappear, however. As early as 1989, Mercyhurst was again fielding a team in the Erie Industrial League. Coach Rick Gotkin was in charge of the outfit, and was quoted in the February 16, 1989 Merciad, “They’ve made me proud,” Gotkin says. “They’ve played good, hard hockey. They’re good kids who are out trying hard, they’ve done well academically and they go by the same rules as any sport here.”
 
The league featured many players from the now-defunct Erie Blades, and Mercyhurst was still playing very competitively. Like the previous EIL team, it would not stay there long. The NCAA DIII team was doing great things in its conference and hockey at Mercyhurst was catching on with the student body and administration. However, in the playoffs, Mercyhurst was to host a playoff series against rival Elmira, but could not secure ice time at the Erie Civic Center. The playoff series had to be played at Elmira, and when Mercyhurst lost in overtime, it became rather apparent that Mercyhurst needed its own ice rink.
 
It was at that time that Coach Gotkin proposed taking the Club Hockey team from a men’s league team to an official, organized, Junior Varsity program that would rely on recruiting players. A major selling point for building a hockey rink on campus was increasing male enrollment in what used to be an all female institution. When the Mercyhurst Ice Center was opened in 1991, the Club Hockey team began playing intercollegiate ice hockey, and it is that same program that still plays there today.
 

 

The Organization & Growth Era (1992-1999)

The 1992-1993 season marked the beginning of Mercyhurst’s play in the Eastern Collegiate Hockey League, under the direction of Jay Barnett. The inaugural ECHL season included Gannon’s only hockey team, Geneseo State’s Club Hockey team, and the Canisius College’s Junior Varsity team. The ECHL league would eventually expand and include other teams from Binghamton University, the University at Buffalo, Cortland State University, Cornell University, Ithaca College, John Carroll University, Niagara University, Robert Morris University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester, Saint Bonaventure University, Slippery Rock University, SUNY-Canton University and Syracuse University.

Mercyhurst would win their first ECHL Championship in March of 1996, under then coach Jeff Veitch, when they beat Syracuse by a resounding 12-2 score and then came back to beat the University at Buffalo 7-6 after being down 5-2 at the start of the third period. Veitch, was named the ECHL Coach of the Year, his first and only season with the program. Veitch now practices law in Erie and has recently been named a 2016 Super Lawyer by Washington Law & Politics magazine. The team would continue to be quite successful moving forward, as it was remarked in December of 1998, “Losing and club hockey are two words that you don’t often hear in the same sentence at Mercyhurst College.” The team had won two championships in three years despite having three coaches in four years. However, that fourth coach would be Bill Shannon, a rock, who led Mercyhurst Club Hockey since 1997 into the legitimacy it knows today.



The American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Era (1999-Present)
 

The Mercyhurst Club Hockey team joined the American Collegiate Hockey Association in 1999, under the leadership of Bill Shannon. In fact, it was at this time when it was remarked, in the college’s newspaper, that Club Hockey games were one of the best attended sports on campus. Bill Shannon coached the team to the ECHL league championship in 2000 and a National Ranking of 13th in the 2001 season, coaching the team to five consecutive winning seasons and a 17th National Ranking in 2004 as well. He was instrumental in leading the team to join the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) and it wasn't long before the entire ECHL league would be absorbed into the Division I level under his leadership. Mercyhurst had joined the most elite non-scholarship hockey league in the nation. “Club Hockey” would no longer be truly appropriate; the team was now known as Mercyhurst ACHA Hockey.
 
In 2005, Shannon left and Tom McKinnon took over. Success came early for McKinnon with an appearance at the ACHA National Tournament in 2006, as well as another ECHL title, and the award for Best Coach in his rookie season. Under McKinnon's tenure, the Lakers would send Matt Warren to the first ACHA Division I All-Star game in 2008. Since that inaugural All-Star game, six more players have represented Mercyhurst at the ACHA DI All-Star game including, Adam Falkner in 2009, Shane Vorndran in 2010, Mark Loecher in 2011/2012, Alex Galbraith and Pat Mayhew in 2013, and Dominic Valencia in 2014.

During the McKinnon era the team would be featured on HurstTV, Channel 19, Mercyhurst’s local cable channel. In 2007, every game was broadcast on television throughout the city of Erie by John Baranowski and David Stearns. They would travel with the team on away games, becoming the first broadcast program in the ECHL.

The ECHL was set to fold at the conclusion of the 2011-2012 season. It was only fitting that the Lakers, one of the longstanding members of the ECHL, would win the final Regular Season title and therefore the final berth to the ACHA National Tournament in 2012. With the book closed on the ECHL, Mercyhurst would move to College Hockey Mid-America (CHMA), a competitive league within the ACHA DI structure, featuring teams that the Lakers had played during their previous ECHL years, including John Carroll University, Robert Morris University and Slippery Rock University. Other CHMA schools include Duquesne University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University. The College Hockey Mid-America League (CHMA) was founded in 2006.  Mercyhurst began its CHMA membership in 2012, winning the playoff championship in their first year of CHMA competition. Now that they have made their entrance in style, the Lakers have set their sights on winning more CHMA League Championships and especially, returning to the ACHA National Tournament each season.

The Mercyhurst ACHA hockey program has a tradition of leadership and growing strengths. The program entered its 18th season in the ACHA in 2016-2017. Current General Manager and Head Coach Tom McKinnon is committed to building a legacy of excellence, continuing to improve and expand upon the foundation that was built many years ago in an effort to become a program of excellence and an elite team within the league. The proud tradition of the ACHA hockey program has grown through the past decade under McKinnon's leadership, culminating in several league championships and four National Tournament appearances in 2005, 2006, 2012 and 2016. Efforts are currently underway to preserve the rich tradition of the ACHA hockey program and to improve the program further, ensuring that the Mercyhurst ACHA hockey program is in the forefront of the nation's elite programs well into the future.

Conference Regular Season Championships
1996 ECHL Champions
1998 ECHL Champions
2000 ECHL Champions
2006 ECHL Champions
2012 ECHL Champions
2016 CHMA Champions

Conference Tournament Championships
2013 CHMA Tournament Champions

ACHA National Tournament Appearances
2005, 2006, 2012, 2016


Goalline Sports Administration Systems
Powered by Stack Sports Hockey Software