Maybe Jerry Seinfeld was right when he said there was something that bothered him about the silver medal in the Olympics.

As he stated, "It's like 'Congratulations, you almost won.' "

And while they weren't playing for the gold medal, the ACHA Div. II Penn State Ice Lions might be able to relate, because when it comes to this season, no one knows second place better than the Ice Lions.

Despite a great regular season, the team finished second in the standings by five points to Stony Brook.

Penn State reached the championship game of the SECHL playoffs only to lose 3-1 to the Seawolves.

And after a great start in the ACHA Nationals, when it came down to one game to advance to the semifinals and win their pool, well, you can figure out there's a pattern here.

A great season that saw them lose just once since November before the SECHL playoffs, instead became a third straight season of being stricken by the Atlanta Brave syndrome -- regular season success and post season disappointment.

But this season was different.

This season wasn't just the story of being knocked out in round robin at nationals again.

This was the story of how a team can evolve and that games were, and still are, not played on paper.

Because on paper, at the beginning of the season, the Ice Lions were not a second place team.

Where they finished actually makes their accomplishments quite remarkable considering it was nowhere close to where they started.

What they were at the beginning of the season was a team of proven seniors and young talent, trying to play a wide open style that didn't really fit the mold of years past.

In a few words, they were trying to play pretty hockey.

Even Penn State head coach Pat Fung himself had doubts about how good his team was coming into the season.

"If you had asked me what kind of a team we were the first week in October, I would've said that we were a middle of the pack team," Fung said.

I remember seeing the team after a game early in the season against NYU that was cancelled.

And I saw the same team that Fung saw then.

A team that was unwilling at times to go into the corner and check. A team that at times was prone to making mistakes in its own end. A team that was not driving to the net. A team that was 4-2. A team that got embarrassed by NYU in November.

The Ice Lions didn't play another home game until January, and when I was able to cover them in person again, they were not the same team.

What the Ice Lions had become was a team that was taking the body, making smart decisions in its own zone, a team that was now crashing the net. Scoring by any means necessary.

A team that had bought into hard work and it was starting to pay off into goals and wins.

"That's the kind of team we've been all year," senior captain Jay Smith said after that game.

"A team we're going to have to continue being. We don't have the offensive weapons we did in the past. We have to grind to get our goals."

It wasn't pretty hockey, but it was winning hockey.

And, boy, did they win.

Penn State played its style at the table and earned a 13-1-1 finish, the second seed in the SECHL playoffs and an automatic bid to Nationals as a reward.

So maybe this year's disappointing finish was not because the team wasn't good enough to climb over the hurdles to a championship.

There was just always someone better.