A Storybook Ending

A Championship Season in Review

Twenty-nine teams entered the 1997-1998 season with a dream of hoisting the Murdoch Cup as ACHA Div. I National Champions. But 28 of those teams ended up disappointed.

The only team that fulfilled the dream was Penn State.

"I couldn't have written a book better," forward Tom Westfall said. "This has been awesome. It was a long road but it couldn't have come out any better."

The title was especially sweet for this year's seniors, who were one win away from winning it all back in their freshman season. But this year, in their first visit back to the championship game since then, winning the title was the end to their disappointments.

The offense was the story of the season. The Icers tallied four or more goals in 31 games, losing only one of them, and 26 of the team's 31 victories were by at least a four-goal margin, including all four games in the national tournament. Penn State scored a tournament-high 28 goals, 11 goals better than second-leading Iowa State.

For an offense that, at the beginning of the season, wasn't supposed to be explosive, it displayed the power to succeed.

"We were always being criticized as a team this year that we weren't going to have a scoring punch," Westfall said. "But coach made four lines, and that was the difference in the tournament.

"We had four lines against some teams' two or three, and they just couldn't compete. We were so much more rested than other teams and we were coming at them the whole game long. We were flying. Every line contributed and every line scored the goals for us."

But the forwards weren't the only ones doing the scoring all season.

Defensemen Don Coyne and Jason Zivkovic were first and second, respectively, in scoring on the season. The main reason was the power play. Coyne picked up 16 of his 25 goals and Zivkovic scored eight times on the man advantage, an advantage that yielded a goal a phenomenal 41.4 percent of the time.

Game after game, the two defensemen battled for the team lead in points. Coyne's 67 points is a single-season record, but the two share the team record for most career points by a defenseman with 153, and have one more season to add to that milestone.

Goaltender John Sixt set a milestone of his own this season. His 18 wins gave him sole possession of second place on the all-time Icers' win list, just 16 wins away from the record. With a season goals-against average of 2.35 and a 91.6 save percentage, Sixt made his presence felt between the pipes, especially in the shutout against Iowa State at nationals.

"They've made my life miserable plenty of times," Sixt said. "I owed them one."

But he is quick to classify that performance as just another win.

"I was just trying to do my job and not worry about anything else," Sixt said. "Just trying to break things down as simply as I could and it just worked."

It is now Sixt's job, as well as the rest of the returning players, to repeat as national champions, something the Icers have never done.

"We're obviously going to have to include some more offense," Sixt said. "We're losing (the seniors) and they've accounted for most of our scoring. We're gonna have to have the original team members step it up a little bit and go from there.

"We still have other guys scoring, so it's not like we have to worry about that. We just need to concentrate on that stuff."

But the Icers also need to remain healthy for another title run. The entire regular season saw Icer after Icer go down to injury. First it was C.J. Patrick and his multiple concussions. Then Jonathan Dohanich's knee injury. Then Cameron Brown's shoulder separation. Then Ed Bursich's medial collateral ligament. Every weekend a new injury seemed to sprout, but everything cleared up when nationals rolled around.

"When you've got that many guys available and they're healthy," coach Joe Battista said, "it's tough to beat us."

And the struggle with injuries near nationals had been a problem that plagued the team in past seasons.

"Before the third period, I said to the guys, 'I want you to win this for the Icer teams over the past three years that never made it here healthy.' "

And they did, relieving the burden of constantly coming up short at championships.

"Our slogan this year was, 'Where we go one, we go all,' " Battista said.

And they all ended up in the Promised Land after their greatest hockey dream was finally realized.