The University of Alaska Anchorage hockey team is heading into its fourth year since being reinstated prior to the 2022-2023 season. Although they’ve yet to win more than 15 games in a single season over that span, they’ve achieved some impressive milestones and head coach Matt Shasby is proud of how far the program has come.
“We’ve had a lot of key wins against some of the best teams in college hockey and we’re just looking to build on that and really establish ourselves as a consistent team that’s hard to play against every night,” Shasby said.
Senior forward Conor Cole was part of the inaugural recruiting class of the program’s rebirth and also takes pride in the strides they’ve made in their pursuit of establishing a winning culture.
“The coolest thing is that each year, I’ve seen how much of a better program we’ve gotten just from the genesis of my first year, being reinstated as a Division I program until now,” he said. “You just see the layers of foundation that we’ve built through players and coaching staff and I think that is really cool to see the culture that we’re starting to build.”
Coming off a 2024-2025 season in which they finished 6-23-4, the Seawolves are optimistic about their chances of fielding a much more competitive team thanks to a mixture of key returners and new promising talent from the transfer portal and junior hockey level.
“I think we’ve added some pieces in our freshman group that are going to add a lot of skill and a ton of hockey IQ to our group,” Shasby said. “Overall I think our team this year has come together nicely. I’m excited to see how they compete.”
The Seawolves are bringing back all three of their goalies from last season, including Alaska’s own Bryant Marks of Wasilla.
Shasby believes that all three have something to prove and while he wants to see what each can do, he’d like one of them to “take the net and run with it.”
“Those three are all brick walls back there and they get along great together in the room so that’s a big thing,” Cole said. “I think they all push each other to be better goalies every day in practice.”
UAA also retained four of it’s top five leading scorers, including sophomore forward Ryan Johnson who led the team with 11 goals and was the only player to reach double figures in that metric.
“We have a lot of nice pieces to get us going here early and hopefully the younger guys can learn quickly,” Shasby said. “The new transfers have done a great job of picking up our systems and what we’re trying to accomplish.”
Strong local ties highlight new blood
Among the new additions as part of the freshman class is Shasby’s own son, defenseman Camden Shasby of Anchorage who finished his final season of junior hockey with the Anchorage Wolverines last year.
“We’re excited to bring him into the mix and a couple other pieces in the backend,” he said.
His son is far from the only local product on this year’s roster as he joins six other Alaskans on the squad with fellow freshman Luke Helgeson and fellow former Wolverine Bryce Monrean as new recruits.
“One of our top priorities is to make sure we are bringing in the talent that grew up here and our doors are always open to kids that want to put on a Seawolf jersey,” Shasby said. “It should be a goal of every Alaskan to play college hockey in Alaska.”
Recruiting his son to follow in his footsteps and become a Seawolf didn’t take a whole lot of convincing by Shasby.
“He got to the point where he just saw the quality of the group of young men we have here and he saw that it was going to be a special group and he wanted to be a part of it,” Shasby said. “It’s been fun having him on the ice with the group and getting him settled in here.”
Embracing challenge of opening gauntlet
The team reconvened about a month ago and is itching to get on the ice against another team. The Seawolves have a season-opening exhibition bout with Briercrest at 7 p.m. Friday at the Avis Alaska Sports Complex.
“We’re excited and hungry to get going and finally start playing a game,” Cole said.
After this weekend’s tune-up, the Seawolves will be facing three of the top programs in the country in less than a month’s span.
They get started with a two-game home series against Bemidji State University in early October. Following a 20-day hiatus, they’ll take on St. Cloud State University and Denver University in back-to-back road series.
Shasby acknowledged that some of their new and young players will essentially be “drinking through a firehose” right off out of the gate.
“It’s going to be a ton of fun for our guys and we’re going to be able to come together quickly and see what we have quickly and hopefully learn a lot these first six games to prepare us for that middle stretch run,” he said.