December 28, 2011
Man for all seasons
Canisius hockey captain Moser sets a good example — on the ice and on the links
by Alan Lessels/Correspondent
Scott Moser (photo: Tom Wolf Imaging/Canisius)
The Canisius golf team has a spring break trip to Florida in March scheduled to kick off its upcoming season.
If he has his way, Scott Moser, a determined and committed senior golfer for the Golden Griffins, will be unable to get away from the Buffalo, N.Y., area for the sunny climes and links of the Sunshine State.
Fact of the matter is, golf coach Todd Hummel feels that way, too.
“Hopefully, we won’t see him during spring break,” Hummel said. “That would be something real positive for him and that’s what we’re here for: to give our student-athletes great experiences.”
Moser, who’s from nearby Tonawanda, N.Y., is certainly making the best of his time and experiences at Canisius.
The thing that might keep him from Florida golf is hockey.
Moser does double duty as the captain of the Golden Griffins hockey team and a regular on the school’s golf team. Heck, he’s almost working triple time in athletics, since the golf team plays in the fall before hockey starts what seems like its never-ending season; then golf returns again in the spring.
The deeper the hockey team manages to go in its postseason, the more likely Moser is to miss parts of the golf campaign, starting with the Florida trip.
Moser’s No. 1 commitment is to hockey. He’s cut things a little tight in the past.
“Freshman year (in 2009), we got knocked out of the Atlantic Hockey playoffs at Bentley and we got home at probably three or four in the morning,” Moser said. “That afternoon, I was on a flight to Florida for the golf spring break trip. I definitely wanted to be going as far as we possibly could in hockey, but getting on a flight to Florida wasn’t bad. It helped me get over the loss a little easier.”
Moser has missed a some golf meets through the years because of hockey commitments, but for the most part he’s been able to follow through on a route he mapped out with his coaches before entering Canisius, and he has been a key contributor in both sports. This fall, he scored mostly in the low 80s in tournaments on the links.
“He’s a great team guy,” Hummel said. “He’s a high-quality kid and he’s been able to do both because of his commitment and attitude.”
Hockey coach Dave Smith, too, raves about the local boy done good not just on the ice and course, but away from them as well.
“He’s an absolute pleasure to coach,” Smith said. “His work ethic is second to none and I find myself, when I’m meeting with young players and having a young team talk about their path, talking about Scott Moser. He’s a mentor and a role model not only on the ice, but off the ice in the classroom and elsewhere. He comes to the rink every day ready to work and do what’s asked.”
A dual major in marketing and business administration, Moser said he’s not sure what he’ll do when the hockey and then golf season ends and he graduates, but he knows at some point he would like to be involved with college athletics.
He’s considering whether to try and play professional hockey for a bit and has talked to Smith about being a graduate assistant at Canisius or elsewhere.
“I’d like to get a Master’s in sports administration, and my dream job would be as an athletics director at a college,” Moser said. “I’ve really grown to love the field of college athletics. Sports are something I’ve loved my whole life and I want to do something associated with that.”
First though, he has a couple of college playing careers to wrap up.
Moser and goalie Dan Morrison are the only seniors on a hockey team that has four juniors and a dozen freshmen, and stood 4-10-3 (4-5-2 Atlantic Hockey) in mid-December.
“A lot of people look at us as in kind of a rebuilding year,” Moser said. “Our goal is to find an identity as a team, not look at is as rebuilding and get better every week. We talk about getting better every day, every week.”
There have been a few good early signs.
Moser, who had three goals and four points in his first 17 games, scored the game-winning goal and the Griffins beat RIT, 3-1, in their home opener.
“That hadn’t been done in my time here,” Moser said.
Then they went to Air Force and, with sophomore Tony Capobianco making 45 saves, pulled out a 3-3 tie with a fierce comeback.
Smith pulled Capobianco late and the Griffs scored two extra attacker goals in the last 1:34 of the game. Freshman Doug Beck got the game-tying goal with six seconds left in regulation, and then junior Preston Shupe nearly won it with a goal that went into the net just after the buzzer sounded to end OT.
“Usually, Air Force is the team in our league with a lot of late-game heroics, and we managed to get it done,” Moser said. “It was almost a shock. We got back to the locker room after the second period and we were pretty dejected. At the end it was, ‘Holy Cow; that really happened.’”
In mid-November, Morrison made 32 saves and Canisius came away with a 1-1 tie at arch-rival Niagara.
That followed up a 6-3 Canisius upset win over Niagara in the first-round of the Atlantic Hockey tournament last winter.
Moser, who grew up about 10 minutes from the Canisius campus and not much farther from Niagara’s, got the game-winner that night, too. For his college career he has 18 goals and 52 points.
“On the ice, he’s a real nose-to-the-grindstone-type player,” Smith said. “He’s physical and a shot blocker. He got the hard-nosed intangibles you want in a role player, but he also has a terrific shot and skills that allow him to get on the scoreboard.”
The future for Canisius’ hockey player/golfer appears bright.
“He’s an easy sell to anybody, whether it’s as a grad student, a potential fulltime employee or a professional hockey player,” Smith said. “It’s an easy conversation to have when you’re talking about Scott.”
Allen Lessels can be reached at feedback@nyhockeyjornal.com.
