DENVER – It's not necessarily how you start the season but how you finish, and the Denver Pioneers hockey team having 10 freshmen on its roster might be a good omen for things to come in 2025-26.
 
Denver had nine freshmen on its roster when it won the NCAA Championship in 2021-22 and its national title team in 2023-24 featured 11 rookies. This year, each of the Pioneers' 10 newcomers are freshmen, and they didn't look out of place in the first practices of the season this week.
 
"They obviously showed that they have an immense amount of talent and skill, and they can actually hold their own against some bigger bodies, like our older guys out there," said junior defenseman Boston Buckberger. "They just showed on the first day that they will be able to hang, they're going to be able to play and they're going to be able to put a big foot in the door for us to get going at the start of the year with 10 of them."
 
Buckberger was in the DU rookies' shoes—or skates—not that long ago. He was part of that group of 11 that helped the school win its NCAA-record 10th national championship, breaking a tie with Michigan, and advanced to a second-straight Frozen Four last season.
 
The Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, native is now one of the veterans of the team that features just three seniors. He will be among the players now counted on to help lead the squad that includes 15 underclassmen, much like the vets did when he first stepped on campus two years ago.
 
"I think some of the older guys when I was a freshmen did such a good job of showing me the ropes and what it's going to take to win," Buckberger recalled. "I think that is one of the biggest things, day-in and day-out, how much intensity and how much detail you have to bring to every single skate, workout, anything, even like our classes. Just to make sure that everything stays detailed in our lives and that we stay on track with everything we want to do and everything we want to achieve. Especially getting No. 11 here at the end of the year."
 
The start of the Pioneers' 2025 training camp was Monday, with the team not wasting anytime with only 17 coach-led sessions before the season-opening exhibition on Oct. 4 versus UNLV. The regular season begins the following weekend on Oct. 10 at Air Force before the home opener the next night against Bentley at Magness Arena.
 
"This group is in a great place to build as we head into the upcoming season," said DU Richard and Kitzia Goodman Hockey Head Coach David Carle. "Energy is high, and we're eager to get started."
 
With the University of Denver on a quarter system, the academic year didn't begin for most students until Monday—which also marked the first day the hockey program could have coaches on the ice with the team.
 
While the players had skated on their own with captain-led practices for several weeks, getting back to a formally-organized group session was something they looked forward to.
 
"There's a lot of intensity, a lot of energy right away," Buckberger said of the first official team skate of 2025-26. "I think guys are chomping at the bit, and we have been for two or three weeks where we're constantly doing scrimmages and work on our own. It's nice to get the coaches out there, and they get the intensity up and just having some structure is really nice."
 
There will certainly be growing pains early on and throughout the campaign for the Pioneers, as they'll likely be one of the youngest teams in college hockey once again. The hope is that the trend of the team playing its best hockey come March and April continues and leads to another big trophy at the end.
 

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