Trail Smoke Eaters alumni raked in the awards last month as the NCAA wrapped up its hockey season.
Trail native and former Smoke Eater captain, Jake Lucchini, earned the Merv Young Award for Most Valuable Player for the Michigan Tech Huskies, as well as the Gary Crosby Memorial Award for the team’s top scorer.
The third-year player scored 16 goals and 23 assists to finish seventh overall in the WCHA in points, 39, and led the Huskies to a conference championship and the NCAA final tournament. Lucchini played three seasons for the Smoke Eaters (2012-15) winding up his final year as captain with a team-leading 35 goals and 88 points.
In addition, Huskies captain and another former Smoke Eater, Brent Baltus, earned the Harold Meese Sportsmanship Award, capping off his senior year with a career-high 23 points.
Sophomore Nick Halloran, and 2016 Smoke Eaters alumnus, earned Colorado College’s top honour, the Thayer Tutt Most Valuable Player Award. Halloran also won the M.B. Hopper Award as the team’s leading scorer, collecting 45 points on 19 goals and 26 assists this season. The Utah native was also named a second-team All-American and first-team all-NCHC after finishing third overall in NCHC scoring and tied for 15th in the country.
A couple of Smoke Eater veterans also shone in their freshman year, with goalie Linden Marshall earning Freshman of the Year Award for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Marshall played in 29 games and posted a 3.17 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage for an RPI team that finished 11th in the ECAC with a 6-27-4 record overall.
Bentley forward Luke Santerno, another 2016-17 Smoke Eater, was named to Atlantic Hockey’s All-Rookie Team. Often lining up as the team’s top-line centre, he finished the regular season leading Atlantic Hockey in both goals, 11, and points, 27, among freshmen, and tied for the most assists, 16. Nationally, at the end of the regular season he was seventh in points per game among freshmen, 0.84.
Overall, Santerno ended his first year at Bentley with 12 goals and 18 assists for 30 points in 35 games and finished second on the team in points.
