Kirkos Sets Lofty Expectations for Men’s Club Hockey

Three-hour practices twice a week, 23 players’ skates on the ice until 11 p.m. and two nearly three-hour games every weekend. These elements will make a winning club hockey program, according to new club men’s hockey head coach Tassos Kirkos. 

With a new and passionate coach, the men’s hockey club is reshaping its culture, finances and recruitment, setting itself further apart from other club sports at Loyola. Kirkos is setting high standards for the team, and he has one goal in mind: win the national championship next season.

Kirkos is looking for players who will give the game everything they have. 

“I don’t want someone that is standing on the ice and pushing pucks around,” Kirkos said, “I need somebody that is as invested as I am.”

The 2025 fall semester was a slow and difficult start as the team wasn’t ready to meet the new standards of Kirkos, who prides himself on refusing to lower expectations. 

Kirkos grew up in South Florida and played hockey at DePaul University, where he graduated from in 2022. He came to Loyola from the Greek Winter Sports Federation, where he recruited players and eventually started coaching.

Kirkos said he isn’t at Loyola for the money — his paycheck being only a couple of thousand dollars a season — but because he’s dedicated to and inspired by the team. 

Under Kirkos, more is expected of the team than the previous coaching staff had settled for. Players must show up to practice on time and ready, manage their time well, work out regularly, eat healthy and stay on top of their academics, according to Jack Lewis, a second-year marketing major and next season’s president-elect. 

Part of this growth comes from a change in the hockey world. A resolution of a lawsuit involving the NCAA and a former Canadian Hockey League player now means players from the CHL are eligible to play for American universities in the NCAA Division I. 

As these Canadian players move into the NCAA Division I, current players may drop down a tier, looking for more playtime and opportunities in Division II or ACHA programs, like Loyola, instead. This opens Kirkos to a new recruitment plan. 

“There will be more kids available to me this year than there have ever been in Loyola hockey,” Kirkos said.

He said he will look for hockey players in the junior leagues from Chicago who are no longer being looked at by bigger schools, and most likely going to lose higher league spots to Canadian players. He currently has 15 players on his radar and believes recruiting them to Loyola won’t be a hard sell. He said he even hopes recruiting students who weren’t otherwise looking at Loyola will give the club a bump in funding from the school. 

Lewis said the program faces financial challenges, as they receive limited funding from the school. Lewis said he believes the hockey team to be more competitive and intense than other club teams. 

The sport is an expensive one to maintain. Lewis said other club sports like soccer can practice and play at Sean Earl Field on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus for free while hockey has to rent arena space and pay for ice time, locker rooms and referees. 

The school also ended its partnership with RUSH athletic trainers, which makes playing more dangerous and hinders the team. Lewis expressed dissatisfaction with Loyola’s club sports in general. 

Lewis said he had a serious head injury this season and was frustrated to have lost a trainer on the bench. 

“[The university] said they’ll work on it, but they won’t,” Lewis said. “We asked at the beginning of the semester, and now the semester is over.” 

A representative from Loyola Club Sports told The Phoenix the decision to end the partnership between RUSH and Club Sports came from outside of Club Sports, resulting in a loss of trainers for teams. 

Kirkos also expressed his frustrations on Loyola’s lack of club sport funding, but he felt confident the club hockey team can show the school they’ve earned it.

“I don’t think anyone is going to work as hard as me or the rest of us,” Kirkos said. “We’d love some more help from the school, but if not, that’s okay, we will show them first.” 

Second-year forward Ryan Kranicki, the team’s assistant captain, from Villa Park, Ill., has played hockey his whole life, including playing AAA for Team Illinois. He said he believes the organization is coming together due to the players they have.

“We have our ups and downs as an organization, but slowly we are pulling together with the amazing group of guys we have,” Kranicki said.  

Because the organization is largely student-run, players must also step up off the ice. The organization had a social media account, a website and a livestream, but they weren’t up to the standards they could be, so Lewis worked to fix them. 

Men’s hockey is one of the few clubs on campus with an official website which displays its roster, schedule, store, livestream links — located on their YouTube channel — statistics and 13 other subpages. This page has been reedited in the last year, with a new site for multiple internship opportunities and interest forms for the team. The team also started taking advantage of equipment rental through Loyola, using nicer cameras and materials to better their livestreams for fans. 

Lewis was recruited for the team during his first year at Loyola. He played hockey in St. Louis beginning when he was four, but was forced to stop in high school when he tore his MCL. He picked the practice back up when he arrived at Loyola. 

For him, motivation from Coach Kirkos pushed him to take what the team already had and make it better. 

“We hired a new coach, and he set the standard,” Lewis said. “So I elevated myself to that standard.” 

Despite these challenges, the team managed to pull it together towards the end of the season, with four straight wins under the leadership of Kirkos, who defined the team’s goals of becoming “elite” and is pushing them to make it there.  

“It takes a strong culture with a buy-in from all members of our team and program to be able to take that next step,” third-year Captain Peter White, a former junior league player with the Chicago Crush, said.

Kirkos believes after Grant Dietz, a second-year forward hockey player from Chicago who plays at the University of South Florida, the Loyola Ramblers have the next five best players in the country, in their league: White, a forward, Kranicki, first-year graduate student and defenseman Michael Wasyliw, fourth-year defenseman Andrew Swanson and fourth-year forward Sam Falbo. Kirkos said he believes these players have what it takes for an NCAA team and don’t even realize it.  

This is what makes Loyola men’s hockey particularly special, according to Lewis, who said their top players could play at the NCAA level.

With the team he already has, and the players he’s hoping to recruit, Coach Kirkos believes this team can win the National Championship.

“100%,” Kirkos said. 

Lewis echoed his coach’s statement, saying the team can confidently win.

Kirkos admitted he hates how much of the responsibility of the club falls on the players. 

“I appreciate that it teaches the students a lesson, but it puts such a huge burden on them, and makes it so a lot of the time the focus isn’t even on the hockey for some of these guys, and I want the focus to be on hockey.” Kirkos said.

Kirkos said coaching at Loyola is one of the most fun jobs he has ever had, and said he’s confident in his players and the future of the Loyola men’s hockey club. 

“I think there is a great chance of going from one to five here, probably better than any other school,” Kirkos said.