Lakeland Regional High School’s varsity hockey team had a season full of successes and shutouts, close calls, and painful defeats.
The season concluded with a record of 12-10-2. Junior forward Ryan Giordano told the Ledger, “There were some games where we looked around the locker room and wondered what was going on and other games where we were confident about being the best team in the conference.” Freshman goalie Kyle Puzio shared that he thought the season was a success, but acknowledged that it had a lot of “what could have been” moments. He also put some blame on the team’s struggles due to illness and flu season that brought down many players throughout the season, including himself.
Back to successes, Giordano shared that the team will not forget their overtime win over rivals West Milford, while Puzio remembered when junior Derrick Rosato got a hat trick and scored the game winning goal in that same game.
Giordano called out junior Sami Essabbar for becoming a “goal scoring machine,” while Puzio highlighted Rosato for being a “smart player,” senior Tommy Korpics for being great in his role as a defense man, senior Shannon Kincaid for playing “smart and simple,” and lastly Giordano for being the top goal scorer for the season.
The Lancer asked Puzio about taking on the role of varsity goalie his freshman year. He shared that he had a rough first game, where the Lancers lost to the Highlanders 5-1, but was able to turn things around overall and get revenge on West Milford less than a month later. Some other highlights of his season were making a 36-save shutout against Mount Olive, on top of two more shutouts over the course of the season, getting revenge on Ramsey in the Silver Cup, and playing through a long illness towards the end of the season and still holding his own. He came close to meeting his personal season goal, and looks forward to coming back for next year.
In terms of next season, both Puzio and Giordano believe the team will come back strong. Varsity will lose only 5 seniors and welcome a strong group of freshmen. They also hope to take home a county tournament win and make it even further in states.
