Anthony Romano never realized how loud Cheel Arena’s goal horn really got.
The Clarkson senior heard the steam whistle’s piercing blast for three-plus years, but it felt different in the stands. He appreciated how the crowd contributed to the overall volume and vibration rattling his bones after the Golden Knights scored, and he felt how the excitement produced a very real drama that caused equilibrium and delirium to converge into one moment.
He just wished he didn’t learn how to appreciate it.
“It’s pretty funny because when you’re playing, you don’t realize how loud it is,” he said. “You hear it, but everything happens so fast, especially overtime goals, like with all the emotions running through. You’re so happy for the team that you got that win, but since I was hurt last year, I got to experience watching games at Cheel and how loud it gets. There are things like that bell in the student section that they ring whenever someone gets hit. I didn’t realize how loud that was, either, but when I was playing, I didn’t really think about it.”
Hampered by injuries for most of last season, those sounds ordinarily would have disappeared into his hockey-playing past but being a member of one of the last classes to receive an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he instead chose to return to Clarkson for a fifth year. He wanted to reclaim and complete his own story with the Golden Knights, and with one extra year in tow, the player that was a 15-goal scorer in 2021-22 scored the overtime winner against Vermont while maintaining a point-per-game average through the first four games of the year.
“I think he’s motivated,” said Clarkson coach Casey Jones of his fifth-year returnee. “It’s a situation where I think Anthony can play past [college]. He’s a pretty complete player, but I didn’t think he got to put his best foot forward last year. That was our conversation, and it’s obviously been beneficial to our team.”
Romano isn’t necessarily the biggest name on the Clarkson roster, but he represents a prototype for a program built around player development. A freshman during the 2019-20 season, he led all Golden Knight rookies with six goals and four assists after scoring three points in his first four games. He scored the eventual game-winner against Michigan while adding depth down the middle to the team’s center position, and he finished the season’s second half with goals in wins against Arizona State and Quinnipiac.
Those two wins boosted the Golden Knights into a postseason slot before COVID canceled both the ECAC Hockey and NCAA tournaments, but Romano continued his development through the strange, topsy-turvy offseason by subsequently leading Clarkson through the abbreviated 2020-2021 season with a nine-goal output. It bridged into a 15-goal, 28-point junior year during which the Golden Knights went 9-1-1 when he scored.
He produced eight multi-point games, including a four-point game against Brown, while scoring multiple goals on four separate occasions, but last season threw the proverbial wrench into his plans for a final, capstone season when injuries limited him to 19 games. He still produced nine goals and scored twice both against UMass during the Kwik Trip Holiday Classic and against the aforementioned Bears during ECAC’s single-game elimination postseason, but not even scoring five goals in five games at the end of the year offered the right ending for him or the Golden Knights.
“The first injury, I was kind of beat up and didn’t know when I would [return to the lineup],” Romano said. “I ended up coming back later than I wanted to, initially, and then I came back and started playing well, was all excited to get ready for the second half of the year, and after four or five games, another one happened. That really hit me hard because it was my senior year, and I wasn’t really thinking about a fifth year. I was just thinking that it was my senior year, and I couldn’t help Clarkson, which is the school I love so much, and couldn’t help my team out.”
“He maybe didn’t get the recognition that he deserves for being the type of player that he is because he didn’t get a chance to really finish last year,” Jones said. “And that’s why he came back for us. He’s carrying a leadership role for us, and that leadership comes from being a role model and the way he carries himself. He’s a tremendous student who practices hard every day, and it’s pretty easy to coach [players like him]. There’s an opportunity here to go finish here with the type of season, knock on wood, that gives us a chance to be really successful.”
Clarkson itself slipped to sixth in last year’s standings, but entering this year with unfinished business was a big reason why the Golden Knights chose to run it back with a class of players who all chose to return for their fifth year. There were transfers that came to Potsdam, but Romano and players like Mathieu Gosselin and Dustyn McFaul provided Jones with a core that linked back to the team’s overall development during an era where fifth-year players increasingly enter the transfer portal because of the inherent two-pronged approach surrounding roster decisions and personal opportunities.
“Matheiu Gosselin, Dustyn McFaul, and Anthony Romano come from pretty good stock,” Jones said. “They come from great families, and in our program, there was never any discussion other than if they wanted to go pro. They’re loyal people, and I trusted in the fact that they had a spot with me, and they knew how important they were to our program. We value that they chose to come back, and it sets the stage for us to attract other graduates because good players want to play with good players.”
“There are a lot of factors that go into it,” Romano admitted, “but I never had any intention to transfer. If I were going to come back, it was always to Clarkson. There was obviously an option to go pro (the Arizona Coyotes drafted Romano in the sixth round of the 2019 NHL Draft), but to finish the year hard and strong, I made the decision with my family and with the coaching staff that I wanted to come back and win. We’ve had some really good teams at Clarkson…I felt like I owed Clarkson. I wanted to do it for myself to prove myself and hopefully bring some championships to Clarkson this year.”
As a result, the Clarkson team that struggled to consistently find a second gear opened its first four games with a couple of resounding statements. A split with Notre Dame in the opening weekend earned a key road win over the Big Ten at a time when non-conference wins are essential and critical to any team’s postseason hopes, and after battling Penn State in a losing effort in the home opener, it was Romano that scored the overtime winner to beat Vermont, 3-2, on last Saturday.
“That was my first overtime winning goal,” Romano laughed, “but I feel like I’ve started off well and came into this year with a mindset of trying to get better every day. It’s kind of worked out over the first four games, and that was a big, big win for our team because we kind of let it slip away in the third after having control. I was just happy for the guys to get that back and get that win.”
“We’d had a short week after coming off a Saturday-Sunday series against Notre Dame,” Jones added, “but I thought our guys did a great job of taking care of themselves [for Penn State] on Friday night. We had some flaws in the night where they took advantage of a couple opportunities, but ultimately, that game is going to make us better for the long haul because they played a completely different style than Notre Dame. Then the next night we came out well against Vermont, but we got a little loose and made some mental mistakes.
“It’s a good sign for our team’s maturity standpoint that we had a chance to close it out and get that win because it’s important to find ways to come out on top. We didn’t do that last year, so I thought [beating Vermont] was really important.”
Clarkson returns to the ice this weekend with a single game in Massachusetts against Hockey East’s Merrimack before returning home for a four-game homestand against Lake Superior State, Michigan Tech, and the ECAC-opening weekend against RPI and Union.
