I sat down with men's hockey assistant captains Adam Estoclet '11 and Evan Stephens '11 before their game on Saturday night to chat about the season and reflect on their time at Dartmouth. The men's hockey team which is currently ranked 18th in the nation wrapped up its regular season at home this weekend. Estoclet recorded his 100th career point in the win against St. Lawrence, becoming just the 35th player in Dartmouth history to do so. The Big Green, which also celebrated its nine graduating seniors this weekend, finished with a winning record for the first time since the 2005-2006 season.
Has senior season gone as your expected it would? Would you say it's been the best season of your Dartmouth career?
ES: Yeah, by far. It's the first time we've been in the top four in our conference, and we got a big win over [the University of New Hampshire]. And being in the national spotlight a little bit has been great. We really want to leave a mark, and we haven't been able to do that our first three years so we're putting a lot of pressure on ourselves, but it's been fun.
AE: I completely agree. This is the first winning season that we've had actually. It's just amazing going to the playoffs with a winning record and as one of the top seeds.
What do you think has been the biggest improvement this year?
AE: I think we just have a lot of depth. We have nine seniors, eight juniors and it just seems like we've all been on the same page. Things have been going our way and we've been playing hard and playing well.
ES: I think the depth is huge. Every day at practice is a battle. Anybody could jump in for anyone else at any time. That makes practice more competitive and that makes games more competitive because guys are fighting to stay in the lineup. We've had consistency and we've done pretty well.
Looking back, what were the favorite moments at Dartmouth?
ES: Hockey-wise, we got to do so many things. Like sophomore year we got to go to Sweden and Denmark. It was an unbelievable trip for us it was so much fun. There's so much going on here. That [Princeton University] game this year was so fun for everybody and that UNH game was huge.
AE: I don't think it's anything in particular. I think maybe the nights aren't the first to pop in your head as most memorable, but when we're just hanging with the guys and learning a lot about yourself and about each other. I think it pulls us even closer, so that's pretty special.
What are your emotions like now that it's senior weekend and there are only a few games left in your collegiate career?
ES: It's pretty scary. We have one game left tonight, but we know for sure we have at least two playoff games. We're pretty confident we'll be playing after that, too. Obviously our goal is to make it to the final four in our [conference] and then to make it to the national tournament. So we could have at least eight games left, so there's a lot of games left to play.
AE: Yeah it's definitely far from over for us, but at the same time we are trying to take it a game at a time. We're not trying to look too far past our collegiate days. We're trying to cherish what we have right now and make everyday count.
All in all, what do you think will be the legacy of this group of seniors?
ES: Before we came in here, all we heard about was that there were seven guys from the team the year before that are playing in the [National Hockey League] now. We always heard about how good they were and how good their team was. They actually never made it to an NCAA tournament, but they had a such a good team they had 20 wins, a lot of good guys. If we can be the first team to make the NCAA tournament in over 30 years I know our class just wants it so bad and it means so much to us. We were really bad our freshman year and we're in a really good position right now so we take a lot of pride in that.
AE: We expect a lot out of ourselves, the nine of us, and I think we're not going to be happy unless we get to that spot and break the trend of 30 years of not making it.
