With seven games remaining in the regular season, Hilton boys hockey is off to one of the best starts in program history at 12-1 riding a ten-game winning streak to a ninth-place ranking in the January 14 New York State Sportswriters poll.
And they are doing it with depth at both ends of the ice.
“We’re clicking offensively scoring goals, we’re doing good defensively keeping it out of the back of our net and the culture is really good right now and that’s why we’re winning games,” Barrett Paolini said.
“We knew we had a solid roster coming into this season, we have a great team all the way from our goalie to our forwards, and we just come ready to play and win games,” freshman Lucas Grizzanti said after scoring a pair of goals in a win over Churchville-Chili.
The Cadets on defense feature four seniors in Philip Fiorella, Joshua Anstett, Patrick Wiza and Trent Letcher, one junior (Jack Palmer), and two sophomores (Liam Porter, Luke Zelesnikar; fourth on the team with seven assists).
They anchor in front of a pair of goaltenders in senior Barrett Paolini and junior Lennon Suplicki who are both among the top three netminders in Section V in goals against average and save percentage. They have five shutouts between them.
“We have I would say six, seven really good ‘D’ and then three extremely solid lines that I believe can compete with any line in the Section,” Paolini said.
Hilton isn’t quite as experienced at forward but sports six in double digits in scoring led by junior Cameron Stewart, who was tied for third in Section V with 26 points, sophomore Casey Hanrahan (sixth with 24 points), and junior Hunter Hutteman, also among the top 15 scorers in the league with 18 points.
Seniors Aiden Kennedy (7 goals, 6 assists, 13 points) and Andrew Paolini (5-5-10) and junior Gannon Driscoll (6-6-12) are next on the Cadets scoring chart as of January 15.
Before their January 14 game, the Cadets honored the first head coach in the program’s history, Tom Dowd, who led that first team in 1988-89 to an 11-win season and a playoff semi-final berth. He died the weekend prior at 80 years of age.
Hilton’s 2023-24 season ended in the Section V playoff quarterfinals to rival Portside, and that loss has provided the team with a mission for this season.
“It has been 100% the motivation that we have had since that game, the way that ended for us in Sectionals,” head coach Chris Monfiletto said. “We had our exit interviews two weeks after that and discussion was around how we can’t let that happen again and, more importantly, how we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Starting from our summer workout program that we started at the end of June, every guy was committed. It was one of the most unbelievable things as a coach because three days a week we’re working out and nobody wants to do it in the summer, especially a teenage kid, and everybody was there.
“Summer camp that we had, everybody was there. It’s an old-school adage about being fully committed to a goal…and these guys have been committed.
“Two years ago, we were a JV team, and we kept telling guys to keep believing in what we’re doing. It needs complete buy-in to be able to work, and the guys do it from our top lines all the way down to our younger guys who just started with us this year.”
The best way to honor one of your founders is to win, and the Cadets are certainly doing their share of that so far this season.
