Watching Denver alum Logan O’Connor lift the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche one night after running into several of his Pioneers classmates at the Dawg Bowl this past weekend brought to mind a story from seven years ago.

Then DU coach Jim Montgomery was giving me a rundown on a freshman class that clearly had him excited, saying to the effect that if the group was as good as he suspected they were, the Pioneers would be really strong the next few seasons.

Monty put it mildly. The class of O’Connor, Troy Terry, Dylan Gambrell, Jarid Lukosevicius, Blake Hillman, Colin Staub and Sean Mostrom was more than good. They helped DU reach the Frozen Four in the spring of 2016 and then were key components in the 2017 National Championship team. For good measure, Staub and Lukosevicius led the Pioneers back to the Frozen Four in 2019, during David Carle‘s first season as coach.

What follows is the first of Magness Mayhem’s offseason alumni reports, and what better place to start than with that freshman class from the fall of 2015.

It would be hard to upstage the season that Terry had (more on that shortly), but O’Connor managed to do it. Part of the beauty of hockey, after all, is that it still is a team-first sport.

By any measure this was O’Connor’s best season of his four in the pros. He scored 24 points (eight goals) in 81 regular-season games. “OC” played an important role for the Avalanche in the postseason, generating pressure from whatever line he was placed on and providing exceptional penalty killing.

Consider this: before this season O’Connor had played in just 43 total NHL games and had 7 points.

In the process he became just the second Pioneer after John MacMillan to win NCAA and NHL titles. John’s nephew Tavis, a DU assistant, was the man who told me some years back (before O’Connor was signed after lighting up the Avs’ prospects camp in 2018) that O’Connor had the tools to be a 10-year NHL player. MacMillan the younger said O’Connor’s skating and defensive acumen would keep him in the league because he fills a needed role better than many.

Terry, meanwhile, not only established himself as a full-time NHL player (his 75 games were 37 more than he had played in any of his three previous pro seasons) but as a bona-fide NHL All-Star while playing in “the OC”.

Speaking of 37, that’s how many goals Terry tallied for Anaheim this season after totaling 15 goals and 48 points in his first three seasons. Terry finished with 67 points for the Ducks. The Colorado native has worked his way from fifth-round draft pick to Anaheim building block.

He played this past weekend with several DU alums, including two of his classmates – Gambrell and Lukosevicius at the Dawg Bowl.

Gambrell was traded to Ottawa from San Jose and quietly played in a career-high 63 games, notching seven points. Of course, Gambrell does everything quietly. The speedy and skilled playmaker also brings a large dose of defensive responsibility. He improved his plus-minus to the positive side of the ledger, and he won nearly 50 percent of the 600-plus face-offs he took.

Lukosevicius emulated his good friend “American Hero Troy Terry” (as he fondly refered to his buddy after his 2017 World Junior Championship heroics) by having his best professional season. “Luko” returned to his home province of British Columbia after two seasons in Grand Rapids, Mich., and produced the best of his three American Hockey League seasons, scoring 19 points (10 goals) in 62 games – all career highs – for the Abbotsford Canucks.

Hillman, a junior teammate of Gambrell’s in Dubuque (USHL) under the tutelage of Montgomery, split his season between the AHL (Grand Rapids and Providence) and Toledo of the East Coast Hockey League. In the ECHL, Hillman averaged a point per game in the regular season and played in 13 playoff games in helping the Walleye to the Kelly Cup Finals.

The remaining two members of the group of seven in 2015 ended their formal playing careers after they graduated from DU, Mostrom in 2018 and Staub in 2019.

Staub, like Terry a Colorado native, served as the Pioneers’ captain in 2018-19 after O’Connor joined Gambrell, Hillman and Terry in signing NHL contracts after their third collegiate season.

©First Line Editorial 2022