GAMEDAY | SFU begins NCAA play on Long Island

EAST MEADOW, NY – The Red Leafs are in East Meadow, New York to face the Long Island University Sharks to kick off the team’s NCAA action for the 2024.25 season.

SFU is coming off a rollercoaster of September, going 2-2-0 featuring a 7-2 win over Trinity Western, immediately followed by an 8-2 loss to UBC. Now the team will head to the east coast to start NCAA play against Long Island University on Saturday night.

LIU is entering their fifth season in the NCAA as an independent program and finished the 2024 season with a 16-20-1 record, good for a .446 win percentage and the best record in the program’s short history. The Sharks earned wins against strong programs over the year including Yale, Sacred Heart, and Alaska-Fairbanks, and earning their single tie against Brown. Saturday’s game will be LIU’s first of the season.

The Sharks saw a ton of roster turnover this off-season, with ten players from the 2024 roster singing professional contracts for this season: five of them going to the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) and the remainder signing in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL) and overseas in Europe. The team would then go on to add fifteen recruits for the 2024.25 season, including Isaac Lambert (Salmon Arm), Anthony Lucarelli (Powell River), Brennan Nelson (West Kelowna), and J. R. Perdion (Prince George) coming from the BCHL. Like the Red Leafs, the Sharks also added multiple NCAA transfers in Connor Gregga (Minnesota State), Andrius Kulbis-Marino (Sacred Heart), Carter Rapalje (Stonehill), and Nick Trela (St. Lawrence).

SFU will be entering NCAA play with a chip on their shoulder, after a challenging 2023.24 season saw them fall on the wrong side of multiple 1-2 goal games, including a 3-1 loss to the Sharks this past November. The Red Leafs will look to their veterans to get them into the win column, including Walker Erickson who has two goals and 7 points in the last four games and had goals last season against Michigan and Boston University, and Kiano Robinson who earned an assist on the lone goal against LIU last season.

The game will be streamed live on NEC Front Row, and you can follow us on Twitter / X and Instagram at @SFUHockey for live updates and video clips.

LIU | LAST FIVE

03.02 at Arizona State | 3-4 L

03.01 at Arizona State | 2-4 L

02.24 vs. Stonehill | 4-2 W

02.23 vs. Stonehill | 7-2 W

02.17 at Alaska-Fairbanks | 0-4 L

SFU Red Leafs vs. Long Island University Sharks

⏰ 4:30pm PT

📍 Northwell Health Ice Center; 200 Merrick Ave., East Meadow, NY

📺  NEC Front Row

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