The Northeast Storm club ice hockey team is hoping to build on the progress it made last season to find success in the Greater Columbus High School Club Hockey League and state tournament.

Prior to last season, the Storm had won just one league game in the previous three seasons. Coach Mark Fixari took over for Northeast before last year and guided the Storm to one of their best finishes in the GCHSCHL. They went 6-10-4 (16 points) in the league to finish fifth, behind Newark (13-5-2, 28 points), PRPC (10-4-6, 26), Hilliard/Southwest (9-9-2, 20) and Westerville (7-11-2, 16) and ahead of Athens (7-13-0, 14).

Newark won the league's regular-season title, the league's Blue Jackets Cup tournament and the Buckeye Cup state tournament.

This season promises to be different for the Storm if they can overcome the loss of a large senior class. Fixari believes the team is deeper, but the overall lack of experience and established goal-scorers could be a concern.

"We have some fundamental issues that will challenge us," Fixari said. "We lost all our main goal scorers, other than Jason Scott, and we also lost our main puck-possession guy. We are deeper this year, our third and fourth lines are better than they were last year. We just need to figure out where our goals will come from."

Through the first seven games, Northeast was 1-3-3.

"We have the talent and the manpower, but I don't think we've played to our full potential yet," defenseman Quinton Cook said. "Last year we made it to the state tournament for the first time and this year our goal was to finish near the top of the league in the regular season and make it back to the state tournament."

The Storm will rely on their defense as they wait for some consistent scorers to emerge. Cook, along with defenseman Bryce Mason and goaltender Randall Phillips, give Fixari hope that Northeast can keep itself in games with good defense. Scott, a wing, and center Kohl Fixari, have been the Storm's top scorers.

One thing coach Fixari is hoping will help the Storm this season is an extra day of on-ice practice each week. Last season, Northeast practiced twice a week for an hour at a time. But this year, a booster helped provide the Storm with a third hour of practice each week.

One of the main things coach Fixari has the team working on in practice is checking and being more physical. The Storm saw improvements last year, but were still pushed around by physical teams like Newark.

"I hate to call the guys out, but there's only a few of them willing to do the physical part and that's hurting us," coach Fixari said. "We believe, like (Columbus Blue Jackets coach) Ken Hitchcock says, that the physical part of the game creates the offensive part of the game. If we get the physical part of the game down, we've got the talent. The teams willing to do the hard work, the checking, that's what's going to win these hockey games."

The Storm plays Saturday at Athens -- a team that won the Buckeye Cup two years ago but then finished last in the league -- and Sunday against Hilliard/Southwest at Chiller North before participating in the Midwest Thanksgiving Classic from Nov. 27-29.