Mark Manney isn’t a mad scientist, but he’s certainly experimenting with the typical process of boys’ high school hockey. 

Manney, head coach of the Andover Huskies, has entrusted his youngest players with serious ice time, and the confidence has parlayed itself into an 11-3 record. 

“We don’t know how good they can be unless they play,” Manney said after the Huskies dispatched Maple Grove 4-0 on Thursday night at the Andover Community Center, adding that the Huskies played nine sophomores in the win.  

“So we decided we were going to play four lines and six (defenders) from the first game to the twenty-fifth and see where it went,” Manney added. 

So far, the 11 wins posted by the team is the most wins in a season for the Huskies since the 2013-2014 campaign, plain evidence that the coaching staff’s commitment to youth is proving fruitful. 

Sophomores scored three of the Huskies’ four goals in the win over the Crimson (4-6-3, 2-3), with Gunnar Thoreson, Mitchell Wolfe, and Hunter Jones all tallying goals. Wolfe’s goal was the first of his varsity career. Junior goaltender Ben Fritsinger made 26 saves in the win, while Maple Grove sophomore Ethan Haider made 40 stops.  

“He’s been working hard, and he’s had a lot of opportunities,” senior forward and captain Brandon McNamara said of Wolfe. 

“It was nice to see him finally get that first one.”

McNamara, who scored the first goal of the game for the Huskies (11-3, 4-1) is the lone captain on the Huskies’ roster, a moniker that Manney says clearly defines the pecking order in the locker room. 

“We’ve got very few senior, so everybody knows who the leaders are,” Manney said. “Our captain says here’s what we’re doing, and everybody else nods and we go do it.”

Fellow senior Sam Mielke wears Andover's "A" as an alternate captain. 

McNamara echoed his coach’s sentiment and said that the upperclassmen and underclassmen feed off of each other rather than pick each other apart. 

“We’ve got a lot of young kids, but I think they know who the leaders are in the older kids,” McNamara said.

“They respect us, and they’re just relentless hockey players,” McNamara added with a grin. 

“They make the seniors better and we make them better.”