Head coach of the Wisconsin men’s hockey team Mike Eaves made his team’s focus clear to the media ahead of this Friday’s season opener, slated for a 7 p.m. start against Northern Michigan at the Kohl Center.

When asked about last season (4-26-5 overall), Eaves made it known this year’s team is only looking toward the future.

“We don’t talk about [last season],” Eaves said. “The focus has been on what we are doing this year.”

The Badgers are looking to redeem the faults of last year’s shockingly disappointing campaign, which ended with the program’s worst record in school history.

This season, the preseason USCHO rankings have the Badgers outside of the top 20 teams. But having received five votes leaves them at No. 30 unofficially, a position easy to move up from if the team finds some early-season success.

Eaves said more scoring options is one of the top priorities this year, something the Badgers struggled with in 2014-15, as only three skaters tallied more than five goals that season.

Highly touted freshmen recruits Luke Kunin and Seamus Malone are Eaves’ new weapons, and he said he is looking at them to fill the gaps up front alongside last season’s leading scorer Grant Besse, who tallied 11 goals.

“One of our challenges last year was scoring,” Eaves said. “[Kunin and Malone] have offensive flair and they’re gritty, they do a lot of good things and we’re hoping they can step in. They’re going to be given kind of that opportunity to do that right away.”

Kunin and Malone will certainly need to take action since the Badgers lost 22 percent of their goal production after graduating four seniors this offseason, including their second-highest scorer, Joseph LaBate.

The need for a new starting-goaltender is still a key question mark surrounding the Badgers after incoming freshman Luke Opilka shocked the team and decided to take a minor-league offer instead. But Eaves was reluctant to drop any names only four days from the season opener.

“I think right now it is an everyday thing,” Eaves said. “We rate [goaltenders] every day, and we will do that right up to Wednesday and will have to make a decision on Thursday. We see good things from all of them.”

Wisconsin will see a new face guarding the net for the first time in 115 games, after the loss of both senior starting and backup goaltenders in Joel Rumpel and Landon Peterson, each graduated seniors.

“We’ll have to make a gut call and we will make that call on Thursday after practice,” Eaves said decisively on who will replace Rumpel.