Ferris State excited for home ice at this weekend’s WCHA Final Five

By @MichaelCaples –

On today’s WCHA coaches’ teleconference call in preparation for the upcoming Final Five tournament, Ferris State associate coach Drew Famulak had to pinch-hit for head coach Bob Daniels.

Famulak said that Daniels had a prior engagement he had to attend to, but the substitution could be seen as a metaphor for the Bulldogs’ season – at least between the pipes.

Ferris State spent the 2015-16 season trying to find the replacement for CJ Motte, the longtime Bulldogs goaltender who was an unwelcome sight for opponents the last four seasons.

That played into trying to find the ‘identity’ of the Bulldogs 2015-16 season, but Famulak said that’s been taken care of in time for the WCHA Final Five.

“I think early in the year we were trying to figure out our identity,” Famulak said. “The one thing that really helped us early was the four senior defensemen that we have back there and they’ve done just an absolute tremendous job in terms of buying our goaltenders some time early because obviously Charles (Williams) missed a full year with an injury, Darren Smith was coming in as a freshman. I thought they did an unbelievable job of – I wouldn’t say making it easier for those two, but the adjustment period maybe wasn’t as hard as it might’ve been if you had two or three freshman back there.”

Famulak praised captain Kyle Schempp for keeping the team together as they sorted out the roster. Schempp certainly succeeded, as Ferris State is one of last four teams left standing in the conference once again.

“Obviously the one thing that I belive that we have is tremendous leadership with Kyle Schempp,” Famulak said. “We have a junior captain and when you give a captain that captaincy, he’s evolving his game, it can be a tough day-in and tough day-out sometimes, but he’s done a great job of leading our guys both on the ice and off the ice.”

The Bulldogs will be the hometown team when play begins at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids for this weekend’s Final Five. There, Ferris State will play in-state rival Michigan Tech – a team fresh off a regular-season conference title.

Famulak said his team is looking forward to the home-ice advantage.

“We’re very excited not only as a hockey program to play down in Grand Rapids, but as Ferris State University,” Famulak said. “We have a school down there, we’ve got a lot of alumni down in that area. I remember two years ago when we played there our crowd was tremendous. I foresee that again. It’s only 50 miles from campus, so we’re very excited about going down there. I think the one thing, and we’ve talked about it as a staff, we’ve had home ice, we’ve won a McNaughton Cup. The one thing we haven’t done is win the Broadmoor Cup. So when you start checking off things and goals as you go through your program, that’s one thing that guys are excited about to compete for.”