Kuruc

HANCOCK — During a three-game stretch in late January through early February last season, the Finlandia Lions women’s hockey team went from a program in search of any wins at all to a three-game winning streak. The Lions swept Lawrence at home and followed that up with a win on the road at Marian.

Unfortunately, those three wins were the only ones the Lions could muster. They dropped the last five games of the regular season and their two playoff games to Adrian.

Still, head coach Lindsay Macy was rewarded with the NCHA’s Coach of the Year honors. A few months later, she left the program.

Enter Mike Kuruc, former assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for SUNY-Potsdam in 2021-22.

Coming from upstate New York to the Upper Peninsula is not a big change as far as the landscape goes, but the culture change is something he was very interested in.

“I kind of set a date, realistically, when we started practice, that the past is the past,” said Kuruc. “It no longer matters what happened before today. We move forward from this point. That was one of the things that we’ve talked about pretty extensively.”

Kuruc takes over a Lions team where the seniors have seen three coaches in four years. Under Matt Marchel, they won seven games in four seasons. They lost a year under Macy due to COVID, and when they returned to the ice last season, they went through a difficult season in which some players left the program and others were added mid-season to try to get through the remainder of the year.

The Lions have never won more than seven games in a season, but Kuruc feels that his experience as a recruiter should help add players to the roster who can be successful in the Copper Country.

“This is a very special place, in my opinion,” he said. “When I look at all the other schools I’ve worked at, Syracuse University, King’s College, SUNY-Potsdam, this place differs from all of them, and it differs in a good way. In my opinion, I think that there’s an aspect of it coming from the size of the school, the student athlete percentage, all those types of things, the area, that make this place so special.”

The Lions enter the season with 22 players on the roster, and Kuruc, who met the team for the first time in September, feels like the players have already bonded in such a way that it is hard to tell the veterans from the freshmen without a roster in hand.

“Both from a coaching standpoint and a player standpoint, I can tell you that that’s one of the things that has made this the tightest knit group I’ve ever been around,” he said. “Our roster is super diverse. That comes from people from different places. We’ve got a kid from Ontario, a kid from New York, two kids from Alberta, one from Manitoba, and just spread out across the states realistically after that. I think that it really makes it a tight knit group here.”

The 2021-22 season was rife with internal struggles for the Lions, so Kuruc is working on repairing the culture of the program by first creating a council of players with representation from each of the classes. He feels it is important to give everyone a voice in team decisions.

“It really gives a voice to every person in every type of group,” he said. “I think they’re doing a really good job so far. They’ve been handling some different things that have come up, planning team events, stuff like that. They really provide a buffer between myself, and the rest of the roster when it comes to certain issues.”

Kuruc is implementing a new system with the team which starts in the defensive zone, and he likes what he sees from the team as they work to learn it.

“We’re doing a pretty good job so far through the first days of practice of working on our (defensive) zone, which has a lot to do with support,” he said. “That’s really the name of the game when it comes to the system that we’re running.”

The Lions will have one fifth-year senior back this season in Peyton Airaudi. The West Bend, Wisconsin, native only played in three games last season and has two points in 49 career games with the Lions.

Schedule

The Lions will hit the ice for an exhibition tilt with Northland on Saturday at the Houghton County Arena. They will then travel to St. Paul, Minnesota, for their first official games of the season against St. Catherine.

In total, the Lions will play 11 games at home this season, including two non-conference weekends against Concordia-Moorhead in November and Wisconsin-Superior in January.

Their final home game of the regular season will come against Marian on Feb. 11.