Penn State men’s hockey’s 2018-19 season came to a heartbreaking and abrupt close in the Big Ten title game Saturday night.

Notre Dame’s 3-2 victory in South Bend wasn’t the storybook ending Guy Gadowsky’s team wanted in its second conference championship game in three seasons. Instead of moving on to their third consecutive NCAA tournament, the Nittany Lions went home to kick off the long offseason.

At face value, this season was a failure in Hockey Valley — Penn State didn’t make it to the NCAA tournament after doing so in each of the past two seasons. However, this surface-level assessment of the season isn’t the most accurate.

When I look back at the 2018-19 college hockey season, my mind will wander to one simple question: What if?

Penn State actually finished at No. 16 of this season’s final PairWise rankings. Finishing in the top 16 of the PairWise would usually be good enough to qualify for the big dance, but AIC — No. 31 in the PairWise — pushed the Nittany Lions out of the tournament by securing an automatic bid for winning the Atlantic Hockey Association.

The “what if” questions I’ll ask in the future won’t have anything to do with the Yellow Jackets’ conference title. What if Arizona State doesn’t salvage a split with a Johnny Walker overtime goal at Pegula Ice Arena early in the season? What if Cale Morris doesn’t stand on his head in the Big Ten title game?

Thankfully, the PairWise formula gives a tangible, real answer to all these questions. If they swept Arizona State on November 2 and 3, the Nittany Lions would’ve finished in the top 10 of the PairWise and headed to Allentown this weekend. The PairWise doesn’t even matter if the Nittany Lions can solve Morris in the third period of the conference title game thanks to the Big Ten’s automatic bid.

My point isn’t to dwell all 17 losses/ties Penn State recorded this year. But one final score — literally one — was the difference between a third consecutive NCAA tournament bid and heartbreak, so it’s unfair to consider this season a complete failure.

Hockey is one of the most random sports played at the NCAA level. Well, all collegiate sports are random to a certain degree, but hockey’s randomness is amplified thanks to the speed and nature of the game. Final scores and results can be decided by one bad bounce or officiating error, and those happened plenty of times to Penn State. This is no consolation to the team right now, of course, but it’s worth noting.

Penn State men’s hockey’s player development was perhaps the brightest part of the 2018-19 season.

The coaching staff managed to harness the extreme skill and talent of blue-chip players and turn that talent into production, but its most impressive accomplishment was turning recruits who may not have been on the radar into stars.

Conversation about the Nittany Lions’ player development should start and end with Evan Barratt. The US National Team Development Program product and third-round NHL Draft pick struggled to start his college career — he got hurt in his collegiate debut, and inconsistency after his recovery even resulted in his benching for a game during his freshman year.

However, the coaches pushed the right buttons with the center, and he exploded into a bona fide star this year. Though his 43 points (16 goals, 27 assists) may not have led the team, Barratt is arguably the best player on this team right now. He was good enough to not just make the United States’ roster at the U-20 World Junior Championship, but to play an important role in all seven games as Team USA won the silver medal.

And what about Barratt’s linemates? Alex Limoges and Liam Folkes showed flashes of talent in their first seasons with Penn State, but neither really channeled that into consistent production. That changed this year — Folkes set new career highs in every major offensive statistic (18-24–42), while Limoges broke the team’s single-season records for goals and points (23-27–50).

Guy Gadowsky and his staff turned a highly-touted recruit and two talented but inconsistent players into the best line in college hockey. Limoges, Barratt, and Folkes deserve a ton of credit for the seasons they had, of course, but the coaches should be proud of their development.

Meanwhile on defense, Cole Hults and Paul DeNaples blossomed into a true shutdown pairing this year. In the past, defense and Penn State hockey haven’t always meshed well, and the team definitely still struggled in its own end of the ice this year. But Hults and DeNaples combined to lock down their opponents whenever deployed, and both players were recognized by the conference in the postseason for their efforts.

Guy Gadowsky reinforced his ability to get the best out of his players this year, which is another reason for optimism heading into the future.

The amount of returning talent Gadowsky has to work with next season is another reason for optimism in Hockey Valley.

While the status of some underclassmen is still up in the air, there are plenty of players who should be back with Penn State next season. Wing Max Sauvé played sparingly this season, but he showed flashes of his skill and goal-scoring ability when he was in the lineup. The fact that he has speed to burn doesn’t hurt, either.

Rising senior Denis Smirnov had a down year by his standards, so his key to a bounce-back year might be re-harnessing his immense talent into production. Smirnov’s seemingly endless scoring drought was “perplexing” to Gadowsky, and I expect the smooth-skating sharpshooter to rebound in a big way this offseason.

Peyton Jones was also inconsistent during the 2018-19 season, but he should be back between the pipes next year. Jones’ return will provide stability to the defense at minimum, with the chance he returns to his 2016-17 form.

And lastly, Aarne Talvitie. Penn State only got to see Talvitie play in 17 games because of a season-ending injury, but he showed flashes of why he could become one of college hockey’s best.

The sniper’s unique blend of shooting ability, size, tenacity, and speed make him one for the future at both the college and NHL levels, and his skill set allowed him to be the captain of Finland’s gold-medal winning team at the World Junior Championship.

The end result of Penn State hockey’s 2018-19 season may be disappointing, but make no mistake: The team took strides in the right direction this year.

Despite missing out on the big dance by the slimmest of margins, Penn State is doing lots of things the right way, which will pay off in the future.