The NC State club hockey team is on a roll after winning the annual Stephen Russell Memorial ACC Kickoff Tournament this past weekend. 

The Wolfpack collected four victories to give it the trophy, beating Virginia 7-3 Friday, Georgetown 8-5 Saturday, St. Joseph’s 9-1 Sunday morning, and Duke 6-2 in the championship game Sunday afternoon.

According to team captain Garrett Sunda, it was a dominant effort across the board that allowed the team to have such a strong performance. 

“It was a combination of things,” Sunda said. “We had really strong offense, every game we had a lot of goals, we just kept pouring them in. We had solid goaltending behind us. Joey Hall, our freshman goaltender, ended up being named the MVP of the tournament. He definitely helped a lot standing behind us keeping the score for the other team pretty low.”

The tournament has been held every year since 2009 in honor of former NC State hockey player Stephen Russell, who tragically drowned in Jordan Lake in July 2009. According to Sunda, it is a big honor for the team to win the tournament in his name.

“It means a lot,” Sunda said. “Especially being my senior year, it’s nice to put our name on that trophy. It’s big for us, it’s a really big tournament we’ve been able to host, with it being in memory of Stephen, we get to play for him. It means a lot to everyone on the team, everyone in the organization, and it also means a lot to Stephen’s family. It was an emotional weekend for a lot of people, and winning it felt great.”

The team will hope to use this tournament and their blistering start to the season to springboard them into another successful year in the Atlantic Coast Collegiate Hockey League.

“I think being able to win the tournament made a huge impact on our season going forward,” Sunda said. “We have a lot of confidence and we’ve really got things rolling now. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing, and I think that will really carry us through the rest of the season. We’re in a really good spot right now, 7-0-0 after the weekend, and you really can’t beat that, we’re pretty happy.”

The club hockey team will look to keep its hot streak going with matchups against Elon, Virginia Tech and UNC-Chapel Hill in the upcoming weeks.[