By Reece Bastien – Contributor

The BU Club hockey season recently came to an end with a quarterfinals loss at nationals in Jacksonville Florida. While it may not be the result the team ultimately wanted, it’s important to celebrate the strides taken and those who will be leaving the team following this year.

This season marked the team’s third official year as a member of the AAU. With each season, the team has done nothing but progress toward the end goal of one day being the first Canadian team to raise the AAU trophy. Nationals this year marked the second straight time the team managed to qualify for the tournament and saw them achieve their highest place finish to date after going 3-0 to make it past the round robin. While the team did lose to middle Tennessee in that matchup, the team still had a remarkable season. With a regular season record of 13-1-0 and 3-1-0 in nationals they carried out the best season in the team’s young history.

In recognition of their efforts in making this team able to achieve the things it has in the past few years, I’d like to touch on the seniors who won’t be returning after this year. Goaltenders Andrew Delages and Reece Bastien both made their final starts with the team in the 2024-25 season as they’ll both be graduating. Andrew posted a 5-2-0 record across eight starts stretching across three years with the team and provided a good goaltending option for the team. Reece started six games for his part posting a 2-3-0 record spanning across two seasons that saw him miss large spans of time while becoming a teacher. 

While the defense didn’t see anybody graduate from the team this year, the forward core certainly took a hit. Will Côté, Ryan Gudernatsch, Frédéric Nicolas and Felix-Antoine Lespérance are all departing from the club this year. With games spanning across four seasons with the squad, Will scored 16 goals and 13 assists for a total of 29 points in 33 games with his time on the team. Ryan played two years on the team and in 23 games, amassed 11 goals and 13 assists for 24 points. Assistant captain, Felix, having been a member since before the team became a part of the AAU, suited up for 42 games over four seasons of play, totaling 8 goals and 8 assists for 16 points over that frame. Finally, another assistant captain, Fred, played three seasons with the team in which he became one of the team’s top point-getters in its history. Scoring 32 goals and 42 assists was good enough to give Fred a total of 74 points in the 33 games he played with the team. These totals place him second all-time in points behind coach Ryan Massicotte, and tied for all time goal leader with assistant coach Will Leclerc.

We wish the best of luck to these boys in their future endeavours outside of the school and want to thank them for helping continue making BU club hockey such a special program to play for. It’s been a pleasure getting to play and write for this school over the past few years. Thank you BU!