Miami’s newest captain is graduate senior forward Ryan Sullivan, and his alternates are grad senior defenseman Dylan Moulton and junior center Blake Mesenburg.
Already a third of the way into its season, coach Anthony Noreen just announced his leadership group last week.
Having taken over the team only seven months ago, Noreen has said since preseason that the process of choosing leadership would bleed into the regular season.
“I think the big thing for me and waiting — and I’ve always done this, and I’ve found this especially important this year — I think they reveal themselves over time,” Noreen said. “I think there’s a lot of guys in that locker room that are capable, but I think the guys did a good job of picking the guys they thought represented them the best.”
The captaincy decisions were largely made by his players, Noreen said, following the precedent of previous Miami coaches.
Sullivan played his first three seasons at UMass, where he dressed for 90 games and recorded four goals and seven assists. He went 5-4-9 in 2023-24, his first season with the RedHawks, and he already has two goals and two assists this campaign.
“He embodies everything that we want to be,” Noreen said. “Sully, he’s a winner. He’s won at every level. He was U-18 and he won a national championship, he was in the USHL and he won a Clark Cup, he was in college hockey, he won a national championship. He’s been around it, he knows what it takes, he was a key cog on all of those teams. And he’s just a guy that, his attitude and his effort never veer, ever once. Doesn’t matter what the score is, doesn’t matter who you’re playing, doesn’t matter what his body feels like, he’s going to give you the same thing consistently, every day. And that’s what we want to be about as a program.”
Moulton has played in 129 games, racking up 11 goals and 13 assists including six markers last season, leading all defensemen.
His game took a major stride overall the second half of 2023-24, and he has continued that ascent this season, patrolling the left defenseman slot on the top pairing all season.
“I’ve seen him get better this year, from Game 1 to the games this weekend, I’ve seen him take strides and I’ve seen him get better,” Noreen said. “I just think that Moults is a guy that has a really good way about him. He’s kind of got that older brother way about him where guys look to him, guys want to be around him. Again, another guy that’s very consistent in his approach and his attitude and how he works — he’s very methodical, he cares, loves this program and he cares about his teammates.”
Mesenburg went 2-1-3 each of his first two seasons, but he already has three goals and an assist in 2024-25 after goals in back-to-back markers at Ferris State to open the season and another tally this weekend.
He has also been a major contributor on the penalty kill, which is currently seventh-best in Division I at 91.7 percent, and Miami has not allowed a goal on any of its five major PKs.
“With Blake, you know what you’re going to get out of him every single day, you know what you’re going to get out of him every single shift,” Noreen said. “It’s never going to be for lack of effort or lack of attitude, he’s consistent in those things. He cares about the program, I think he’s really good with the rest of the guys, and he’s really good with the young guys, helping them with things. He’s a guy who’s consistently punched up, and that’s not a knock on his talent, it’s a praise of his work and his effort level. Right from the very beginning he’s bought into the change and what we’re trying to do.
“It’s easy to hold guys accountable when you do it right way yourself, and I think he’s got a really good way of communicating with younger guys in leading by example, and I also think he’s got a way about him where he could step up and he could say something, he could call another guy out, because any guy in that room knows that he’ll be the first guy to do something right.”
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