As the lights dimmed, the warm-up video played and the standing-room only crowd of 6,370 roared, years of hard work by the Penn State hockey program came to fruition.
The long-time dream of Associate Athletic Director and former Icers head coach Joe Battista; the hard work of third year head man Guy Gadowsky, who came to the school when it was still a club team; the vision of Buffalo Sabres owner and Penn State alumnus Terry Pegula who donated $102 million to build a Mecca of college hockey in State College; was all now a reality.
As Pegula dropped the puck in the honorary opening faceoff a new era of Penn State hockey, in a new conference, in a new state-of-the-art arena was born.