May 16: Senior forward Alexander Dahl will captain the 2016-17 St. Lawrence University men's ice hockey team and defensemen Gavin Bayreuther, Eric Sweetman and Ben Masella will be the assistant captains.

Dahl, who had his junior season get off to a slow start due to an off-season injury, returned to action and played in 19 games, scoring two goals and assisting on three others. Dahl, from Eau Claire, WI, was assistant captain last season and has played in 82 career games and has nine goals and 13 assists. Also an outstanding student, he is the Kevin Dougherty Scholarship winner for the class of 2017 and was also the Ronald C. Hoffmann First Year Scholar-Athlete Award winner and the Saint nominee for ECAC Scholar-Athlete of the Year as a sophomore.

Bayreuther, Sweetman and Masella are all part of a Saint defensive unit which should be a team strength in 2016-17.

Bayreuther was a first-team All ECAC selection, second-team All America and was the Saint MVP and Pete McGeough Award Winner as outstanding defenseman as a junior and will be one of the leading defensive scorers in program history. He was the first defenseman to lead the team in scoring last season with 12 goals and 17 assists for 29 points and enters his senior season with 27 goals and 55 assists for 82 points in 112 career games.

Sweetman will repeat as assistant captain after performing that role in 2015-16 and was a second-team All ECAC selection as a junior. He had three goals and 12 assists in 37 games and was among the team leaders in plus/minus at plus-13. He heads into his second season with 11 goals and 39 assists for 50 points in 112 career games.

Masella was the 2015-16 team's Paul J. Flanagan Most Improved Player Award winner and earned a regular role in the Saint lineup with his strong defensive play. He played in 35 of 37 games as a junior and scored one goal and had eight assists. He has played in 62 games in three seasons and has three goals and 13 assists for 16 points.

2016-17 Schedule 

The Saints will open their first season under new head coach Mark Morris at Penn State on Oct. 6-7 to start a challenging series of non-league games. They will host New Hampshire and Merrimack the following weekend before playing at UMass.-Lowell and Providence Oct. 21-22. Wisconsin and Minnesota will visit Appleton Arena to conclude October with league play staring with Princeton and defending ECAC Champion and national runner-up Quinnipiac at Appleton on Nov. 4-5. The Saints will play at Union and RPI and host Yale and Brown on consecutive weekends before heading to Belfast, Ireland to play in the Friendship Four, playing their second league game of the year against Quinnipiac in game one and meeting either Vermont or Massachusetts in the second round.

A home set with Harvard and Dartmouth will start December play with Clarkson visiting Appleton Arena for the first of two meetings between the North Country rivals on Dec. 9. The Saints will return to play in the New Year at Vermont on Jan. 3 and will conclude the non-league portion of the schedule at Canisius on Jan. 6-7. They return to league play with back-to-back road trips to Brown and Yale and Colgate and Cornell before concluding January with a home set against RPI and Union. The rematch at Clarkson will begin February action on Feb. 4 with a game at Princeton on Feb. 10, Cornell and Colgate at Appleton on Feb. 17-18 and the regular season conclusion at Dartmouth and Harvard Feb. 24-25.