NEWS

Mike Stanaway’s success building championship teams and national qualifiers in the Northern Pacific Hockey League and Minnesota Junior Hockey League made him an attractive option for the New York Aviators.

Now in his first season as head coach and general manager with the Aviators, Stanaway is producing the same type of results for the Brooklyn, N.Y. team.

Following a strong recruiting effort to replace all but three spots from last year’s roster, the Aviators are on top of the United States Premier Hockey League’s Empire Division with a 23-3-0 record. They are looking very much like the expansion Marquette Royales team that Stanaway turned into a Bush Cup champion and USA Hockey Tier III National Tournament team a year ago in the Minnesota League.

Strong special teams, explosive offense and a physical style have brought the Aviators to the top in a hurry.

“We’ve very similar,” Stanaway said when comparing last season’s Royales to this season’s Aviators. “For being in an East Coast league, we play very physical. We really focus on puck possession.

“We’re an offensive team, as we were last year. Right now, we lead the league in goals scored, but we’re also No. 2 in goals against. We try to be a balanced team, and we focus a lot on our special teams and our penalty kill and power play percentages.”

Stanaway brought assistant coach Cliff Cook and two players, Minnesota League all-tournament defenseman Hayden Rajala and current third-leading scorer Michael House, with him from Marquette.

The Aviators also looked elsewhere, including throughout the Midwest, while putting together their potent lineup. League scoring leader Jimmy Warrick comes from the powerhouse midget program at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota. He is one point ahead of teammate and league assist leader Daniel Backstrom from Finland.

“Mike knows how to build a winner, and he’s proven that every step of the way,” Aviators owner and director of operations Jim Loughran said on the team’s website when Stanaway was hired. “He’s one of the hardest workers I know and always puts the players before himself.”

Stanaway led the Southern Oregon Spartans to the Northern Pacific’s Cascade Cup and the 2012 USA Hockey National Championships. Over the past three-plus seasons, his teams are 128-48-1, including a 26-game winning streak with Marquette last season and a 15-game streak that was snapped last week in a split with the second-place Syracuse Stars.

The Aviators have succeeded with some of the league’s top players at each position, plus what Stanaway describes as “tremendous balance.”

Loren Sawyer, a 20-year-old from Edwardsville, Ill., has handled the bulk of the time in goal, posting a 2.22 goals-against average and .916 save percentage.

“I consider him one of the top goaltenders in the league,” said Stanaway, a Marquette, Mich. native who has also coached the Central Wisconsin Saints junior team in the Great Lakes Hockey League and on the U18 AAA level with the Green Bay Gamblers. “If you take a look at our defense, Mike Kolwicki and Hayden Rajala have just been fantastic.”

Warrick and Backstrom are joined by House among the league’s top 10 scorers.

“I’ve been fortunate to go to nationals two of the last three years,” Stanaway said. “I kind of have a recipe for what I think will make a team successful.

“We just try to put the pieces in place. We’ve been able to do a pretty good job of doing that and getting some good, hard-working kids who are willing to work on doing the little things.”

Together, they are producing some big results for the Aviators.

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.