OUA Champion reflects on first CIS season, hockey career
Named to the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) West Division All-Rookie team. An OUA Champion. Player of the Game honours with an 18-save shutout in the 104th Queen’s Cup. A bronze medal finish at Nationals while named to the tournament’s All-Star team. Later recognized as the University Cup’s “Top Goaltender” of the tournament.
That’s quite a list.
With all of that, Guelph Gryphons’ goaltender Andrew D’Agostini still puts his teammates at the top.
“My teammates, to be honest with you,” the first-year Gryphon countered when asked what he’s most proud of this season. “For really turning things around.”
From three wins through the first 16 games of the season, to competing for the OUA Championship against the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), there’s certainly something to be proud of.
“Just sitting back on my net, leaning up against the post, watching my team flip the puck in their zone and beat them up,” D’Agostini recalled of the Queen’s Cup game on March 7. “[UQTR] tried to bring it out, but we’d just send it back in. It was a real pleasure to watch that.”
It would be one of the highlights on the season for the goaltender.
“The crowd was unbelievable,” the Scarborough, Ontario native explained. “I’ve been part of bigger crowds than that, but I don’t know if I’ve been part of a better crowd.”
The highlights extended past a provincial championship, turning an underdog Gryphons team into the bronze medalists at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) National tournament in Halifax.
“To end on a win for the graduating guys, the experience of the Queen’s Cup, and Nationals,” D’Agostini explained. “They were all highlights of the year.”
It wasn’t always about the highlights, however, as D’Agostini and the Gryphons faced early adversity – both on and off the ice.
“My roommate, Cole Hamblin, passed away within a month or so of meeting,” D’Agostini said of the hardest thing he had to overcome this season. “Then all of the losses on top of that in the first half, it didn’t help.”
“There was definitely a combination of things,” he added. “But it makes for a great story now.”
Prior to writing history for the Gryphons, D’Agostini made waves for the Ontario Hockey League’s (OHL) Peterborough Petes. Playing five years for the Petes, a single-team OHL career feat that few accomplish, the goaltender compiled a 71-85-2-9 career record with six shutouts (four of which came in his final season in 2013-14).
With only 11 playoff games throughout his tenure in Peterborough, D’Agostini’s 2.84 goals-against-average and .926 save percentage for a 4-6-1-0 underdog run for the Petes in the 2014 postseason turned out to be the prequel to the netminder’s remarkable ability to change a game, and a season.
Looking at the success of his hockey career on a grander scale, D’Agostini is quick to credit two people who have been there right from the start: his parents.
“My dad was the one to drive to rinks when I was young, take me out to watch all kinds of hockey games, meet scouts, go to interviews, extra practices, and skates,” D’Agostini said, adding that both his parents were immensely influential for different reasons. “He would give me advice, and little things that, probably looking back now, gave me an advantage over other players.”
“Now my mom, I don’t think she’s missed a game this year. She comes and cheers me on, I can always expect her to be there,” the Gryphon continued. “I’m lucky to have the parents I do.”
Holding a mentality that never fails to recognize others before himself, D’Agostini puts roots in an unfaltering “no regrets” attitude.
“There were options to move on from [Peterborough] in my last couple of years to teams where I maybe would have had more success,” the goaltender explained. “But I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Peterborough was so good to me, I wanted to pay them back by riding out my whole career there.”
“I just put my head down and go to work every day,” D’Agostini continued. “No regrets. It’s one thing I wanted to make sure I lived by.”
No regrets: a mentality that the 2014-15 Guelph Gryphons certainly learned to embody, with No. 30 leading the way.