Penn State men’s hockey has never really had The Guy.
Ironically, their head coach is named Guy but that’s beside the point.
When it comes to the players on the ice, Penn State has always had more of a cast of characters than a star player carrying the weight. Sure, there have been breakouts like Peyton Jones, Alex Limoges and even Casey Bailey – dating back to its early Division I years. Some of that is by design though.
Guy Gadowsky-led teams are very much about the word “team” rather than one individual player. Penn State has not churned out a high number of NHL players just yet. No player has solidly taken over the stat sheet on the offensive end as teams often trade for everyone firing a barrage of shots at goaltenders nightly.
But if anyone can become Penn State’s “The Guy,” it’s now-sophomore Aiden Fink. The 2024-25 season’s success goes as far as he goes, and in many ways, he’s already shown he’s the one that can do it.
“He’s a special player because of the way he thinks about the game. However, I think with added size and strength, I think he can even get better,” Gadowksy said about Fink at Penn State’s media day in September. “We’d be optimistic about him if he didn’t put on muscle, which he did. But now that he has. I think the sky’s the limit.”
During his first season at Penn State, Fink became the first freshman to be placed on the All-Big Ten Freshman team in eight years. Fink led the team in points, raking up 34 – the highest by a Nittany Lion since Nate Sucese racked up 38 in the shortened 2019-20 season. Those 34 points were good enough for third all-time by a freshman at Penn State. In addition to the productive output overall, Fink also set a school record for most power-play goals in a season at eight.
However, all of those are tangible stats recorded on the score sheet. Where Fink shined brightest was his ability to simply make you notice him every time he stepped on to the ice. There was something just a little bit different with him that hasn’t always been seen by the team mentality Gadowsky teams have preached.
That might just be what Penn State needs to get back to the NCAA Tournament, where in 2022-23 it was just one goal away from advancing to its first Frozen Four.
After that promising season, it felt like Penn State had made up its lost ground when the 2019-2020 season was cut short by COVID. Yet last year, it felt like Penn State took a step back. There were a litany of reasons why, including not as strong goaltending from Liam Souliere, whose goals against average dropped from .917 to .874 and has since transferred to Minnesota.
Moreover, Penn State did not have the same spark it had the year prior.
Penn State struggled to find momentum – something Gadowsky teams have relied on including the 2022-23 one – as last year’s early season rut of six straight games without a win from late October to mid-November prevented any momentum generation.
Because of the lulls, Gadowsky changed the way his team scheduled its non-conference games this year.. In our interview with him on the podcast, he emphasized a stronger non-conference schedule to build some “grit” – offering his clenched-teeth pronunciation.
Penn State’s 2024-25 season features the usual challenges in conference of the big guns like Michigan and Minnesota, ranked inside the top 10, and Michigan State’s recent resurgence largely sparked by Trey Augustine’s netminding has them ranked No. 4 to start the year.
Before it gets there, Penn State will have to start the season with a trip to Alaska before returning back east and playing No. 8 Quinnipiac on the road.
That should build some of that “grit” early on for Penn State’s team and it’s probably needed as it’s relatively young. More than half of its roster is underclassmen and nine freshmen will suit up for the first time in the blue and white.
That’s also where Fink’s role might be crucial.
If Fink can continue to take a bigger role in 2024, then Penn State could have the start of an impressive young core that is needed to re-establish its winning ways for not just this year but beyond. It’d be a core centered around one of Penn State’s most dynamic players ever.
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on the guy because he had such a great year last year and him and his teammates worked extremely hard,” Gadowsky said about the sophomore. “They’re going to have to do that again to have success but certainly we see optimism that that should continue.”
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