R.I.T. senior forward and Churchville-Chili native Garrett McMullen entered the first weekend in December needing two more games played to reach 100 in his four-year college hockey career. And that has been a dream come true.
With ten career goals and five assists in his first 98 collegiate games, McMullen has almost always been a role-player on the third or fourth line since joining the Tigers—a job that doesn’t receive a lot of accolades or notices from fans, but one that is essential to every team.
“For me this has probably been some of the best hockey Garrett has played for us this year,” R.I.T. head coach Wayne Wilson said. “Whatever line he has been on, he brings a lot of momentum and has worked extremely hard.
“I’ve been happy with him. Nothing has been given to him and he’s had to work hard for everything. From our perspective we appreciate his efforts that he comes to the rink with every time. He’s been great and it’s great to have a local guy and be able to see what they can do.”
McMullen played varsity hockey as an eighth-grader and freshman with Churchville-Chili under Jim Jackson for one year and Brian Young for one year before heading to prep school at Northfield, Vermont for three seasons. Then he headed west to the Trail Smoke Eaters in the British Columbia Hockey League where he scored 38 goals and 80 points over two seasons.
“The league out there had some guidance and I had some people I trusted who had been through the ropes playing junior and took an extra couple of years before going to college and they suggested that the league would fit for my style of play,” McMullen said. “And there’s a lot of recruitment out of there. It’s a good, solid league; a pretty offensive league so it fit my game at the time.”
“I went to boarding school for three years and that was a good experience as well making me grow up a little bit moving away from home and getting my focus on school and hockey – there really wasn’t much time for anything else.”
Now the final three months of his collegiate career begin. As of Thanksgiving he was one of just seven forwards on the Tigers roster to be a plus in plus/minus – a statistic that measures times on the ice for equal strength goals for and against.
“Is it going quick – yeah,” McMullen said after a recent Tigers home game. “October seems like it takes forever to get here and when you start playing every weekend it seems to fly by.
“I’m just enjoying it weekend by weekend, game by game. I don’t want to get too much in it being my last year. I’m just trying to enjoy it and live in the moment.”
