ORONO – Michel Leveille, center for the University of Maine men’s hockey team, made up for lost time last season.

He will be counted upon to help make up for lost goal production this season.

Leveille, a redshirt two years ago who wasn’t allowed to practice with the team, had a memorable first season as he racked up six goals and 34 assists in 43 games.

He was chosen Hockey East’s Rookie of the Year.

Unfortunately for Leveille, he injured his left knee 10 minutes into the 1-0 loss to Denver in the NCAA championship game and was hampered significantly by it.

“That was really frustrating. Denver was the type of team I was really comfortable playing against. But I’ve got to learn from that,” said Leveille.

He said the knee is 100 percent right now and he has gotten himself in great shape thanks to his summer workouts.

“Obviously, I was happy with my first year. But this is a totally different year. I have already started to make changes. I worked harder during the summer to get my physical conditioning to another level,” said Leveille, who is Maine’s top returning point-getter.

He is hoping his conditioning will lead to more consistency.

“I want to be able to skate 100 percent on every shift. That’s what I’m looking for,” said Leveille, who had seven multiple-point games last season.

The 5-foot-9, 184-pound native of Levis, Quebec, would like to put more pucks in the net and knows he needs to shoot more.

Maine coach Tim Whitehead feels he will.

“He has a scoring knack, he just didn’t shoot the puck a lot last year. That’s typical of guys with great ice vision. They tend to pass more than they shoot because they see so much,” said Whitehead. “We’ve got to impress upon him to shoot more in practice and if he does that, it’ll carry over into the game.”

“I look for him to bury a couple more,” said Maine junior goalie Jimmy Howard. “To come in here and get 34 assists last year was awesome. He had a tremendous year.”

Maine has lost three of its top five goal scorers and that will be the biggest question mark this season.

“I don’t see that as a problem. It’s more of a challenge to me and the other guys. Obviously, we’ll need some guys to step up. Last year, we had the same situation. We lost 10 guys. Guys like [Lucas] Lawson, [Robert] Liscak and [Marty] Kariya were big names that were hard to fill. You’ve got to bring your game to another level every year and that’s what every guy is going to do,” said Leveille, whose 14 power-play points (2 goals, 12 assists) were among the team leaders.

Senior co-captain John Ronan called Leveille an “incredible player who does things on the ice a lot of people can’t do. If he does the same thing he did last year and maybe improves a little bit, he’ll have another good year. He’s looked great in preseason.”

Maine has played in two NCAA championship games over the last three seasons, losing 4-3 in overtime to Minnesota in 2002 to go with last year’s setback to Denver.

“There’s nothing else to say about it. We want to improve every day and achieve what we didn’t achieve last year,” said Leveille, who combines creative playmaking with gritty, physical play.

Maine opens its season at Vermont on Oct. 3.