When Paul Flanagan and the Syracuse ice hockey team began its inaugural season five months ago, every first for the team was looked upon as a learning experience.

Debut versus Colgate: learning experience. First win against Quinnipiac: learning experience. Christening of a raucous Tennity Ice Skating Pavilion: learning experience.

As he stood behind the boards when the season began, Flanagan was merely hoping his young na’ve squad would be able to soak in what it meant to be a Division I team.

Today the Orange tackles another first: its first playoff game in the program history against conference foe Niagara in Erie, Pa., at 3 p.m. And this time, there will be no mention of this being a learning experience.

Flanagan expects a win.

‘He’s not preaching anything like that, we are here to win,’ senior Rachel Tilford said. ‘We are over our first-season jitters. We are going to win.’

Despite its record of 9-15-3, SU heads into today’s match envisioning a victory. Thanks to its recent six-game winning streak, the fifth longest in Division I, the Orange enters the College Hockey America conference tournament with confidence.

This confidence, a winning streak and the chance to bring home a playoff win would have seemed foreign if you asked Tilford and the rest of the squad at the beginning of the season. Now, it is more than an opportunity. It’s a reality that is within their grasp.

‘I don’t think we ever thought that we would have a chance at all this, at a seven-game win streak,’ Tilford said, ‘but hopefully we can make it seven this weekend.’

This weekend marks the end of what has been a marathon first year for the program, as the team first suited up an astonishing 156 days ago. Though there have been obvious drawbacks to playing the longest season of any Division I sport, there have been benefits as well.

Perhaps none greater than the ability of the team to mentally shake off the mindset and ideology of its rookie season. As the season comes to a close, the team feels seasoned, and as a result, is focusing in even more and keeping the reality of these being the last games out of their minds.

For Tilford, one of two seniors on the team and the only four-year Syracuse student on the squad, the reality of the situation hasn’t hit home either.

‘No, it hasn’t struck us yet, and I don’t think that it will hit us until we don’t have to come to practice,’ Tilford said.

Since its last outing, an exhibition loss to the top team in Canada, McGill University, Flanagan has been preaching to his team about a ‘new kind of focus’ that team exuded in the game and will need in the playoffs. He is making sure the team doesn’t look past the Purple Eagles (5-24-5, 2-11-3 CHA), seeing that he has mentioned nothing about a potential semifinal matchup against Mercyhurst, one of the top teams in the country.

‘We are just trying to get a real focus, get away from any distractions,’ Flanagan said. ‘We just want to have a different focus, because if you lose once, you are out.’

If Syracuse gets by the Purple Eagles, it will meet the No. 3 Mercyhurst, a team that went 16-0 in CHA play. Flanagan said the Orange’s outing against McGill will provide it with a game to look at if the team does indeed make it to Friday.

‘If we make it to the Mercyhurst game, we can definitely fall back on the McGill game,’ Flanagan said. ‘We used that game to prepare ourselves for the playoffs, and if we play Mercyhurst, I think the McGill game will truly help.’

Even though it may appear out of reach for a first-year program, prior to practice Wednesday, the team contemplated what it would mean to reach just one more first: A CHA tournament championship.

‘I wouldn’t go as far to say that it would be a miracle run,’ Rising said, ‘but it would prove that we have the potential to be a top ten team next year.’

aolivero@syr.edu

Published on March 4, 2009 at 12:00 pm