Sunday, September 21, 2025
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Friar Coach Nate Leaman PHOTO: PC
In a surprise to most veteran Hockey East fans, the Hockey East coaches yesterday in their annual preseason poll picked the Providence College Friars to finish 2nd in the upcoming 2025-26 season. Here’s the poll:
2025 Hockey East Preseason Coaches’ Poll
1. Boston University – 105 (7)
2. Providence – 91 (3)
3. UConn – 90
4. Maine – 87 (1)
5. Boston College – 85
6. UMass – 64
T7. UMass Lowell – 53
T7. Northeastern – 53
9. Merrimack – 33
10. New Hampshire – 31
11. Vermont – 23
*First place votes in ()
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This is somewhat of a surprise, as for the last several years, Boston University and Boston College are routinely picked #1 and #2 with the Maine Black Bears another popular choice. In fact, in some very early national preseason polls, pollsters picked the BC Eagles as the #4 team in the country.
This poll probably has Coach Nate Leaman of the Friars flinching a little bit. The Friars lost 15 players from last year’s 21-11-5 NCAA team, the largest turnover in players for PC hockey in several years. While a lot of those players were backups, the losses include eight players with a collective experience of playing in 1,050 college games.
The graduation of veteran forwards Nick Poisson and Chase Yoder, as well as veteran defensemen Taige Harding, Connor Kelly, and Guillaume Richard, will be felt in the early season as this year’s team begins to assimilate six new freshmen and two transfers. How young is this team? There is only one senior, veteran goalie Phil Svedeback, and one graduate student, newcomer Kale McCallum from the University of New Brunswick. I doubt there is another team in Division One hockey with only one senior and one graduate student in their lineup.
Why are the Hockey East coaches optimistic, and why should PC hockey fans be optimistic about the 2025-26 Friars? Three reasons.
First, the Friars return five of their top six scorers from last year—a group of freshmen and sophomores—Hudson Malinowski, Tanner Adams, Graham Gamache, John Mustard, and Will Elger—who are now talented sophomores and juniors. Last evening on the Nate Leaman Radio Show on 790 The Score, Coach Leaman indicated that “this is the deepest group of PC forwards I’ve had since the 2019 season”.
Second, Coach Leaman and his assistants have snagged some promising, talented freshmen, including the #10 overall pick in the NHL draft this past spring. Get familiar with the name Roger McQueen. He decided to postpone joining the Anaheim Ducks organization to play for the Friars this year. The 6’6” forward will not be hard to find on the ice, given his size and stick-handling ability. Leaman indicated that he was able to convince him to play for the Friars because of the opportunity “to get stronger, to develop mental toughness, and to play in the best Division One hockey league in the country.”
Third, the Friars feature a veteran, seasoned, excellent goalie in senior Phil Svedeback. A draft choice of the Boston Bruins, Svedeback produced solid numbers last year with a 2.42 goals average/game and a .911 save percentage.
I am also optimistic about the Friars hockey team this year. But to be successful, they face two big challenges: 1) their meager 16% power play success rate last year needs to climb to something closer to 20%; and 2) they are not deep in veteran defensemen and will need some quick seasoning from their newcomers.
I will discuss these challenges and PC’s 2025-26 hockey schedule in next week’s column.
Bob McMahon is the former Director of Parks in the City of Providence and a lifelong Providence College Friar fan.
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