Arizona State Moving To D1

[boblav1]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

Another recruit, defenseman Liam McGing.

http://ushlstats.stats.pointstreak.c...seasonid=12983

@liam_mcging
I'm thrilled to announce my commitment to Arizona State University to play D1 Hockey. Thanks to all who helped along the way.

Also, former 14-Year Professional Alex Hicks Joins Sun Devil Hockey Staff
http://www.thesundevils.com//ViewArt...medium=twitter

[QUAlum2004]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

Another commit

Jeff McCarthy @McCarthyOTB 8h8 hours ago
94 F Charlie Zuccarini (Trail) commits to Arizona State, one of the fastest skaters i've seen this year and provides a great skillset.

Jeff McCarthy @McCarthyOTB Nov 23
Charlie Zuccarini on Trail is a 94 to keep a name of, one of the fastest players in the entire league.

Zuccarini hails from Connecticut and was someone I was hoping Quinnipiac would be in on.

[Ralph Baer]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

OTB article about ASU recruits http://overtheboards.net/arizona-sta...uiting-update/.

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

Another commit

Zuccarini hails from Connecticut and was someone I was hoping Quinnipiac would be in on.

he is definitely the kind of players you'd want to see committing to a new team like ASU. Undersized a bit but outperforming most in the BCHL at an advanced age. One for the players I was talking about when I said Masters(?) wasn't ideal.

[Red Cows]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

OTB article about ASU recruits http://overtheboards.net/arizona-sta...uiting-update/.

I just took a somewhat in-depth look at the records of all these guys in the OTB write-up.

Gruber looks to be the best player of the bunch.

Every one of these guys that has USHL experience is negative for the entirety of their USHL careers as far as plus/minus is concerned. ALL of them! McGing (-4), Gylling (-3), Stevens (-1), Masters (-17!). Yep, bunch of difference makers there.

The writer then correctly points out that Stevens and Gylling practically live in the penalty box.

Then, the writer omits a sort of relevant thing about forward Charlie Zuccarini, in his write-up of him:

............is a forward and much more of a finesse player. The 20-year-old forward out of Trail is small in stature, but makes up for it with skating ability and pure compete level, not to mention an ability to find a way to put the puck in the net. His first couple of strides are outstanding and he puts in that consistent effort every shift to try and make opposing heads spin. Blowing by defenders and creating scoring opportunities in the BC league, he is a pure scorer who reads the play extremely well.

This may very well be and the guy looks like he can stick the puck in the net, but, he led the entire USPHL in penalty minutes last season, playing forward! He missed the equivalent of MORE than 2 entire games sitting in the box last season!

I don't think many schools are shaking in their shoes looking at these 8 guys and the prospects of scheduling ASU.

[gfmorris]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

I just took a somewhat in-depth look at the records of all these guys in the OTB write-up.

Gruber looks to be the best player of the bunch.

Every one of these guys that has USHL experience is negative for the entirety of their USHL careers as far as plus/minus is concerned. ALL of them! McGing (-4), Gylling (-3), Stevens (-1), Masters (-17!). Yep, bunch of difference makers there.

The writer then correctly points out that Stevens and Gylling practically live in the penalty box.

Then, the writer omits a sort of relevant thing about forward Charlie Zuccarini, in his write-up of him:



This may very well be and the guy looks like he can stick the puck in the net, but, he led the entire USPHL in penalty minutes last season, playing forward! He missed the equivalent of MORE than 2 entire games sitting in the box last season!

I don't think many schools are shaking in their shoes looking at these 8 guys and the prospects of scheduling ASU.

Early on, you get who you can get.

GFM

[Ronnieb]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

I just took a somewhat in-depth look at the records of all these guys in the OTB write-up.

Gruber looks to be the best player of the bunch.

Every one of these guys that has USHL experience is negative for the entirety of their USHL careers as far as plus/minus is concerned. ALL of them! McGing (-4), Gylling (-3), Stevens (-1), Masters (-17!). Yep, bunch of difference makers there.

The writer then correctly points out that Stevens and Gylling practically live in the penalty box.

Then, the writer omits a sort of relevant thing about forward Charlie Zuccarini, in his write-up of him:



This may very well be and the guy looks like he can stick the puck in the net, but, he led the entire USPHL in penalty minutes last season, playing forward! He missed the equivalent of MORE than 2 entire games sitting in the box last season!

I don't think many schools are shaking in their shoes looking at these 8 guys and the prospects of scheduling ASU.

Brutal recruiting. smells like desperation before they even get started. Guaranteed all of these recruits would have to compete their @#$ off to gain a prominent position on the current team. Maybe a true sign of zero experience at D1 coaching level. Makes very little sense

[manurespreader]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

guaranteed all of these recruits would have to compete their @#$ off to gain a prominent position on the current team.

ygbfkm

[#1collegehockeyfan]

Early on, you get who you can get.

GFM

I am just happy the west will have a presence in the college hockey world.
If you build it they will come. Plant the seed and watch it grow. Glad to see college hockey return out west.

[gfmorris]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

I am just happy the west will have a presence in the college hockey world.
If you build it they will come. Plant the seed and watch it grow. Glad to see college hockey return out west.

So am I.

GFM

[Red Cows]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

Early on, you get who you can get.

GFM

I only peeked at this because of the pontificating, earlier in this thread, that postulated that ASU was all of a sudden going to instantaneously turn into some sort of hockey recruiting mecca, as was also alluded to by school officials at the press conference when the announcement was made that they were going to D-1. As I said, earlier in the thread, this was said without any sort of rationale for it possibly being so other than some citations of the climate there as well as the "babe quotient" at ASU by posters here. I doubted that these things would matter that much, particularly where a winter sport is concerned, and at a program that not only has no facilities to recruit to, it self-admittedly does not know where they are going to play, even, NEXT season!

As you said, early on, you get who you can get and it looks like no truer words could be spoken in ASU's case, so far, IMHO.

I am also not in favor of the whole "dipping your toe in the pool to see how hot the water is" approach to starting a D-1 program used by Penn State and is now, again, going to be used by ASU. Hybrid schedules featuring a lot of what should be inferior opponents, whether you are a first year program or not (Penn State played 10 ACHA games it's first season in D-1), IMHO, is not a prescription for getting your program kick-started towards any level of consistency or excellence. It certainly does nothing to galvanize your fanbase, either, by playing opponents they have little interest in seeing and would not and should not ever see again. Frankly, the message it would send me is "We're scared" or "We don't want to be embarrassed". It's trite, but, if you don't want to play with the big dogs then don't get off the porch.

Take a look here on USCHO, in prior year's schedules, at UNO's pretty brutal inaugural schedule in it's first season--'97-'98, in which it went 12-18-3 with a team entirely comprised of newcomers that had never played together before, as opposed to both Penn State and ASU essentially moving their club teams, for the most part, up to D-1. A season by UNO that featured a road sweep, at Denver, and a win against #12 Maine, also on the road, the next night after being beaten by them 11-0.

End result of this approach? UNO ended up in the CCHA tourney final in it's first season in the conference and in only the third year of the program's very existence. And, they got there by stomping # 5 Michigan (at one point this was a 6-2 game before ending up 7-4) at the Joe in front 20,000 of their own fans, too, while putting 2 players on the all tourney team.

You can't soar like an eagle when you are flying with a flock or turkeys.

It may work out for Penn State as they have had state of the art facilities to recruit to from day 1 that may tend to offset the problems bred by playing opponents you had no business playing, and the whole "that hurts you more than it helps you" thing. But, that clearly isn't going to be the case at ASU.

[purpleinnebraska]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

I think ASU's success is inevitable, and will come relatively soon. Face it - they're a mega-school from one of the "Big 5" conferences. There are only 8 such schools playing D1 hockey right now, the Bi6, BC, and Notre Dame. Excluding PSU (since they're new to D1), the other schools have all made the Frozen Four since 1998, and BC, MN, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan State all have multiple Frozen 4 appearances and have won national championships since 1998. No other school outside of NoDak and Denver can say that.

Does that translate into success every year? Of course not, and the ECAC's 2 titles show that the big boys don't hold a monopoly on the national championships. But it's likewise foolish to think a school as big as ASU is going to fail at a sport that won't cost them near the money they pour into football or baseball every year.

There are a lot of comments along the lines of "Pro hockey is failing in Arizona, so Tempe just isn't a hockey market." Putting aside the fact that pro hockey also failed in CT and they have 3 D1 schools, the numbers differences make the pro/college comparison irrelevant. If you draw 5000 fans 18 times a year at maybe $20-30 a pop, you have a pretty successful college program. That's a lot easier than drawing 18,000 people 41 times a year for a $50 minimum, and for a school of 60,000+ students, 5000 is a pretty manageable number. I just don't see how this can fail.

[Runninwiththedogs]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

I think ASU's success is inevitable, and will come relatively soon. Face it - they're a mega-school from one of the "Big 5" conferences. There are only 8 such schools playing D1 hockey right now, the Bi6, BC, and Notre Dame. Excluding PSU (since they're new to D1), the other schools have all made the Frozen Four since 1998, and BC, MN, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan State all have multiple Frozen 4 appearances and have won national championships since 1998. No other school outside of NoDak and Denver can say that.

Really? No other schools?

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

I think ASU's success is inevitable, and will come relatively soon. Face it - they're a mega-school from one of the "Big 5" conferences. There are only 8 such schools playing D1 hockey right now, the Bi6, BC, and Notre Dame. Excluding PSU (since they're new to D1), the other schools have all made the Frozen Four since 1998, and BC, MN, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan State all have multiple Frozen 4 appearances and have won national championships since 1998. No other school outside of NoDak and Denver can say that.

Minnesota-Duluth and Maine meet your criteria, not to mention the fact that 3 of the last 4 champions have been first-time champs, the last 4 title games have included 5 teams that had never won before. The landscape is changing, the field is leveling...

[purpleinnebraska]

Re: Arizona State Moving To D1

Minnesota-Duluth and Maine meet your criteria, not to mention the fact that 3 of the last 4 champions have been first-time champs, the last 4 title games have included 5 teams that had never won before. The landscape is changing, the field is leveling...

My error, and thanks for the correction. I would note, though, that with those 2 added in, only 4 of the 51 schools that aren't from the power conferences meet the recent championships/Frozen Four criteria, while 5 of the 7 from the power conferences meet it. Of course there is success to be found for the smaller schools. My point was that for the mega-schools, success is almost inevitable. As far as the landscape changing, there are some signs that point in that direction as you note, but it's also true that there have been at least 2 mega-schools in the Frozen Four in 7 of the last 9 years, including last year.