Men's Ice Hockey All-NESCAC Teams Announced

Hamilton Sweeps Individual Awards; Houk Named Player of the Year

HADLEY, Mass. – Hamilton sophomore defenseman Joe Houk (Richboro, Pa.) has been chosen by the conference coaches as the NESCAC Player of the Year. Houk helped his team post an 11-4-4 conference record this season, as the Continentals finished atop the NESCAC standings for the first time ever. He becomes the second Hamilton skater to earn the conference's top honor, joining the ranks of former Continental great Gus Katsuras, a two-time winner in 2005 and 2006.

After collecting 19 points on four goals and 15 assists and finishing fifth among his teammates during a solid rookie season, Houk returned to the ice this winter and had a breakout sophomore campaign as he paced the Continentals in scoring with a team-best 17 goals along with 16 assists for 33 points, the most by a Hamilton player in a single season since Katsuras netted 38 in 2005-06. His 33 points rank second among league defenders and place him third among all skaters, while his 17 tallies tie him for third in goal scoring in the conference. Of the 17 games in which Houk recorded at least a point, 10 were multi-point affairs, highlighted by a career-high six-point night in a 10-7 shootout win at the Univ. of New England on Jan. 29 with two goals and four assists. In addition to being named Player of the Year, the first sophomore to ever earn the honor, Houk was also chosen as a member of the All-NESCAC First Team.

Patrolling the blue line on the All-Conference First Team with Hamilton's Houk was senior Kyle Shearer-Hardy (Montreal, Quebec) of Bowdoin. The only returning member from last year's First Team, Shearer-Hardy garnered All-NESCAC accolades for the third consecutive year after being named to the Second Team in 2009. Shearer-Hardy is in the midst of his finest season in a Polar Bear sweater, registering a career-high 34 points on nine goals and a league-leading 25 assists to pace all defenseman and rank second in the league overall heading into the final rounds of the NESCAC championship this weekend. Half of the senior's points have come on the power play (5-12-17), as Bowdoin boasts the most efficient man-advantage unit in the country at the moment with a conversion rate of .336 percent.

Bowdoin was the only team which placed two of its players on the All-NESCAC First Team. Joining Shearer-Hardy from the Polar Bears was the 2010 NESCAC Rookie of the Year, sophomore forward Daniel Weiniger (Warren, N.J.). A year after finishing second to Shearer-Hardy in scoring for Bowdoin with 13 goals and 13 assists, Weiniger has leaped past his senior teammate and currently leads the NESCAC with 39 points (1.62 per game), the most by a Polar Bear since Michael Carosi recorded 47 in 2001-02. His 18 goals rank second in the conference, while his 23 power-play points are second to none (9-14-23). Recording 12 multi-point games to just three penalties in 24 appearances this season, Weiniger strung together a 10-game scoring streak (10-14-24) midway through the year during which the Polar Bears posted a record of 8-2-0.

At forward with Weiniger were two team's leading scorers, Williams senior Ben Contini (Toronto, Ontario) and Middlebury junior Charlie Strauss (Eagle River, Wis.). In his second season with the Ephs, Contini has nearly doubled his point production from a year ago, scoring nine goals and recording a team-high 22 assists for 31 points (5th NESCAC). Strauss matched his freshman point total of 23 in two fewer games, netting 11 goals and assisting on 12 others.

Rounding out the 2011 All-NESCAC First Team was Trinity senior goaltender Wesleyan Vesprini (Lexington, Mass.). A Second Team selection in 2008 and again in 2010, Vesprini was a consistent presence in net for the Bantams over his four years, going 48-27-7 with a 2.37 goals against average, a .924 save percentage, eight shutouts, and leading Trinity to the 2008 NESCAC crown in his rookie season. He finished 2010-11 second in the conference in goals against average at 2.36 and first in save percentage with a .927 figure. Vesprini joins Bowdoin's Weiniger and Middlebury's Strauss as First Team members who are also semifinalists for the Joe Concannon award, given by the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston to the best American-born player in New England in Division II/III.

Hamilton's Michael DiMare (Medford, Mass.) earned Rookie of the Year honors. The forward finished as the top freshman scorer in the NESCAC, as his 15 goals and 12 assists for 27 points put him just behind Houk on the Continental stat sheet. Of his 27 points in 25 games, 22 came in league play.

For the second year in a row, Norm Bazin of Hamilton was the choice among the coaches for NESCAC Coach of the Year. In his third season at the helm of the Continentals, Bazin's club earned the number-one seed in the NESCAC tournament for the first time ever. A 1994 graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Bazin began his coaching career at his alma mater in 1996 under Hamilton alum Tim Whitehead '85, the current coach at the University of Maine.