The FWAHA Regular Season gets underway this week as our four varsity teams return to Wednesday night action. Coming off a thrilling conclusion to last season that included runs to the State Finals for both Carroll and defending Memorial Cup Champion Leo there’s plenty to look forward to when the puck drops this Wednesday. To get primed for a new 15 game slate we’ll yet again go team by team to check in on how last season went and look ahead to the next four months of high school hockey action in the Summit City. Starting things off it’s a familiar face at the top of our preseason rankings.
1.) Carroll Chargers
It was a dominant run for the Chargers last season through city play… until it was time to hand out the big trophy. An undefeated season was undone at the final stop when the Leo Lions thwarted the Carroll offense en route to a 3-1 victory in the Memorial Cup Final. Despite falling just short at the end, through every other lens last year has to be seen as a resounding success for the Chargers. They completed the first undefeated regular season (potentially) in league history or at the very least the first in a very long time. They outscored the rest of the league by a minimum of 40 goals in the regular season and occupied the top four spots in the scoring race, and it wasn’t a particularly close margin. If that wasn’t good enough, their crossover season was stellar as well and culminated in a run back to the State Finals, this time two divisions higher and at the pinnacle of Indiana high school hockey. Taking on the juggernaut Culver A squad the Chargers again came up just short of taking home the main prize. That said, going to double overtime against Culver A is for all intents and purposes the ceiling for every other team in the state and the Chargers should be incredibly proud of that second place trophy.
This season will bring some change for Carroll after losing seven players to graduation, the biggest ones being Brody Burge and Carson Carteaux. Those two were pillars over the course of the last few seasons for the Chargers and will be missed, perhaps more so in the case of Carteaux who leaves some question marks in net for the first time in a while. Last season Carteaux was a big part of what Carroll was able to accomplished and anchored the team from the back end with a 1.76 GAA and a .912 SV%. This year the starting duties will presumably fall to Luke Vanantwerp who made 23 saves across two starts in league play last season. Backing him up will be a newcomer in Cam Gnau, brother of Captain Carter Gnau who is one the key returners coming off of Second-Team All City honors last year.
Another key piece that returns for Carroll is back-to-back scoring champion Dylan Braun. After bursting on to the scene as a Freshman, Braun’s Sophomore campaign was on another level as he dominated from start to finish, finishing seven points clear on Gnau is second place despite missing four of the 15 games. It’s hard to imagine how he could get better offensively, but if he does it will no doubt be special to watch. The big triumvirate up front is completed by Finn Cupp who finished third in the scoring race last season with 10 goals and 17 assists for 27 total points. He will be leaned on to take another step this season in the absence of Burge given a little less depth up front. Further down the lineup is where Carroll will really feel the losses to graduation. While not the star of the show, Cam Drexler was a good secondary scoring piece for Carroll with seven points last season, good for sixth on the team. Max Fiedler and Hunter Drinkall were also useful pieces that will need to be replaced. Luckily for them, Carroll already has a couple of good options in-house that can step up in Colsen White and Adlee Scheerer. Viktor Wolff and AJ Baldwin could be thrown in that group as well. All of that to say, despite losing a number of top six forwards the Chargers offense should largely keep up their pace from last season.
The blue line is perhaps the least affected area for Carroll as they lose Corbin Klenke and Nick Tigner but return four of last year’s top six. That will put more onus this year on Davis Cline as he will assume more responsibility at both ends of the ice now and the same can be said for Dylan Carteaux. However Carteaux comes with the caveat of how Head Coach Erik Watson decides to deploy him. He missed a lot of last season due to injury but starred in a few games lining up at forward late in the regular season before returning to the blue line to close things out. All things said and done the Chargers are again the early favorite to win the league but a Week Two matchup with Leo will show us a lot about both of those teams.
2.) Leo Lions
After being picked to finish fourth to start last season by yours truly, the lesson might not have been learned as here they are being potentially underestimated again. The arguments for Leo to be at the top? First on the list is of course Drew Baumert which is an even bigger advantage going in to the season given the early questions about Carroll’s goaltending situation. Beyond just the #1 netminder, Leo has a proven #2 (or #1B as the Lions would prefer) in Xander Mulholland. They are also the defending Memorial Cup Champions after defeating the team currently ranked above them, which has to count for something. Further down that line, they proved that the Memorial Cup wasn’t necessarily lightning in a bottle after a run to the 2A State Final where they ultimately fell in overtime to South Stars Red. Another reason is the team is still young which means plenty of room to grow this year as those players step into new roles. But that point leads us to the reasons they start the year at #2. Those new roles… open because of key losses at the top of the lineup. During our Media Night preview show Head Coach Mike Robison and Baumert both lamented the losses of Aaron Amick, Weston Roth, JJ Scott, and Dylan Davis who were their four best skaters.
Amick was the key cog on Leo’s blue line last year and also was able to set the tone to start games from a forward spot. Roth’s speed and tenacity was a valued asset and Scott’s wicked wrister will be a noticeable loss to the Lions’ attack. Davis is out of the picture for now as he focuses on his duties with the Fort Wayne Spacemen, but Baumert speculated that Davis could make a mid-season return similar to what he did in 2021-22. Perhaps that speculation is fair too given the fact that Davis was on the initial Leo roster, which would be a huge boost to their offense. In the mean time, the Lions still have plenty of weapons up front to take on the extra responsibility. Chief among them will be Colten Calhoun who was second on the team in points last year as a Freshman with five goals and seven assists. He now takes the reigns of the offense with all three of Leo’s other double digit scorers from last year not with the team anymore. Helping out Calhoun will be Colin Robison who brings back his seven points, Anthony Serafini who potted three goals last year, Alex Hendricks and Sam Schwartz also return with six points between the pair.
The defense is in fairly good hands despite the loss of its workhorse in Amick. Tyson Finefrock should be counted on for a bigger role along with Vance Knoblaugh and Riley Murphy, a trio of youngsters that are the future on the back end. In terms of skaters, Leo’s biggest advantage this year will come from their depth and the continuity they have in their lineup with the limited turnover, regardless of how important the players going out the door were. Baumert told us that they will need to adapt their play style a little bit though as a result of that and become more of a grinding team than they were in the past. That’ll be interesting to see unfold given how their top rival Carroll is the opposite of that and the Vipers also talked about changing their play style to a more “tough” style of play. Leo has a good test out of the gate on Wednesday with a Homestead team that caused them some issues late in the season last year so we’ll learn a bit about them early on.
3.) Homestead Spartans
This is where things get a little more cloudy, as we have two teams coming off seasons where there wasn’t a ton of success. The difference though is that Homestead’s struggles were more expected (at least in these parts) than the Vipers were. Homestead had to replace arguably their six best players and on top of that had a new Head Coach in Jake Kirkpatrick to adjust to after DJ Fisher being behind the bench for years. It took some time but eventually Homestead was able to put the pieces together and turned in a decent season all things considered, finishing third in the league. In state play it a heartbreaking run for the Spartans as they lost back-to-back games in overtime to be eliminated.
Now with a new season on the horizon Homestead again has big holes to fill in the lineup, this time up front. Aiden Byler, Drew Brimner, and Gavin Elkins are all out the door, representing Homestead’s top three scorers. If that weren’t enough, the Homestead coaching staff claims they lost a whopping 82% of their goal scoring, which is obviously a colossal hill to climb. That will be the key story line for Homestead as they get things going this season but luckily they’ll be in a much better position to get off to a good start in league play this year after having already played double digit crossover games, contrasting with last year when they took the ice on opening night with zero games under their belt. Also working in their favor to start the year is that they are much more established now at both defense and goaltending than they were a year ago.
After losing half of their blue liners entering last season, Homestead has no such issue this year. Cam Hurley and Henry Loxton come back and run the show back there now as Seniors, along with a few other experienced defenseman. One of the keys for this group will be how they evolve and take the next step, with Kirkpatrick telling us on Media Night that he wants them to be more involved offensively, which could be critical to replacing the lost goal scoring discussed up above. Hurley will be at the forefront of that movement as the last year’s leading scorer from the defense corps. Now we get to Homestead’s biggest advantage from the outset, the goaltending. Like Leo, Homestead is a situation where they can comfortably trot out either of their now-Senior goaltenders and feel like they have a shot to win. Conner Gould received the majority of the ice time in league play, with 11 games played to six for Alex Dougherty, but Dougherty also had his moments and put up some quality performances. Gould’s numbers from last season though should make him the incumbent starter in net. Last season he put up a 2.96 GAA and a 0.899 SV%, both of which were good enough for third best in Fort Wayne. To demonstrate the tandems effectiveness as a whole, despite winning half the number of games, Homestead allowed four less goals than the second-place Lions and nine less than the Vipers. The tandem will be an interesting dynamic to watch as the season rolls on and could prove pivotal for playoff seeding, both in the city and the state.
4.) Fort Wayne Vipers
From first to worst the Vipers went and we start the season with them still at the bottom, all though they get a opportunity on night one to turn this prediction right on its head. No doubt the Vipers have a tough road ahead of them but the path exists to move up the standings. When you have a dynamic offensive talent like Jackson Bertels that’s always possible, but the true key to that jump for the Vipers will be the same thing that was their undoing last season, goaltending. Last year was a series of crushing losses after, admittedly, giving up bad goals at bad times. An easy stat to prove this in goals for compared to goals against. Leo, a team that finished with five more wins, gave up the same number of goals as the Vipers and actually scored five LESS goals. Again, Leo won FIVE more games with the same number of goals against and fewer goals scored. Now that was last season, we want to focus on this season and there’s optimism to be found on that front with Brody Rosswurm. While an unproven quantity in Fort Wayne, Rosswurm brings some pedigree with him from his time with the Indy Fuel AAA team. If he could cut down on the untimely goals that plagued the Vipers last season, that would go a long way in sending the team closer to the top of the table like they were in 2021-22 when Aiden Orlikowski starred in their crease. However that’s just one factor to be considered for the Vipers this year, they also have to find new ways to score goals following the departure of some critical personnel.
While Bertels remains, one of the teams other dynamic forwards in Darcy Koch has graduated as has last year’s captain Robert Gross. Those two sandwiched Bertels as the team’s top three scorers and combined for 25 points. The good news is that there are very capable forwards ready to fill those spots. Logan Ormsby has shown good chemistry with Bertels in the past and those two will be the key drivers for the Vipers offense up front. Another key returner in Michael Scully. Scully was fourth in points on last year’s squad and one of his biggest assets is his ability to play both forward and defense. With the losses of Keaton Rice, Christian Brown, and Jack Backstrom, Scully is likely more needed on the back end than up front and given his speed he’s essentially a fourth forward from back there anyways.
In terms of depth beyond that, the Vipers are actually in surprisingly good shape for a team that finished at the bottom of the standings last year. Nicholas Vanryn and John Goodine are the players that come to mind first from a forwards perspective. Simon Watson could be one to take a step on the blue line as a Senior and seems likely to be the power play quarterback with the aforementioned departures at defense. How much of a step those players, and those beyond them, can take will be important to determining the outcome of this season for the Vipers, who might be the most interesting team at the start of this season as they look to work their way back up the standings. That night one matchup with Carroll will give us our first indication of just how interesting they’ll truly be.
