2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

[Martin St. Louis Fan]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

http://fearthetriangle.com/2011/11/21/vermont-preview-4/

What a dope.........

[snwbrdr]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

Yeah, McCarthy is definitely a top 3 forward but he will not be back this year so it's not like Sneddon sat him for disciplinary reasons.....

The defense has been the biggest issue and if they get that resolved they will be fine, although the chances of making the HE playoffs is not looking great unless they get on a tear and I don't think they are experienced and talented enough to actually get on a big tear and take down good teams - although they did manage that against Minnesotta - but McCarthy was a huge part of that offensive success.

This weekend won't help or hurt in the HE standings but it will certainly be telling as to where they are headed. I suspect a split but my slight optimism has been generally greeted with disappointment....

[Toronto_1]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

No other coaches would have let this kind of thing go this far without addressing it. If Sneddon is gonna stay then Gasparini or Micheletto need to go. A change must occur! As and example..a program like ours needs more seasoning running the D than Gasparini when Micheletto is gone!! If Gasparini is main recruiter...get a new one.

In College Hockey, the MAIN recruiter is the 1st assistant = Micheletto. He's from Chicago and basically tries to recruit out of the USHL when everyone and their uncle knows the bluechippers from that league go to the CCHA/WCHA. So, guess what, we get the fourth rate talent? BU/BC win the Massachusetts sweepstakes. So what to do? GO EVERYWHERE!! Sneddon knows this. He coached at Union and got the UVM job on the basis of his ability to overachieve with limited talent. Now, he's gone to a Hockey East school with an unbelievable environment (i.e. Burlington VT - UVM) to create a D-I powerhouse and it ain't happening. Because there's no talent son.

Anyone notice that Ted Donato just picked up another Quebec recruit out of midget hockey in Quebec (we're talking 15 yrs old people; check the Heisenberg site). So UVM loses 3 Biega brothers and Louis Leblanc to HAHVAHD. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? Oops, Yann Cisse and Alex Chiasson at Boston University?!? Because apparently we don't recruit in our "home state" any more. Who knows, maybe the UVM coaching staff could identify a St. Louis/Perrin/McKell/Ducharme/Perrault/Boyce/Draper/Patterson/Tremblay/Mitchell if they bothered to recruit in the only place where they should ALWAYS WIN? It might mean learning how to speak French. It might mean hanging out in remote corners of the province that are straight out of Deliverance (or as we might understand it to be Newport Vt or perhaps Jeffersonville? . My point being, the coaches are not working hard enough. WHO do you think you are? Certainly not someone who is permanently employable because your recruiting effort have yielded NOTTA.....Beat the bushes...WORK HARDER....Figure out where your bread and butter is you Ivy League (Sneddon, Micheletto) idiots -- common sense??

[snwbrdr]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

Cats dominated Colgate in first period, best period of the year that I have seen. Should have had 3 or 4 goals easily. Snakebitten and Evins played great.

2nd period Cats dominated again but to a lesser extent - yet gave up two goals. Bad bounces all over the place killed them.

3rd period Cats did not have the same energy.

colgate had about 5 scoring opportunities and burried 3 of them - the second and third goals were just nasty NHL level shots the 4th goal was poor goaltending from what I could see)

If the Cats shot half that well they would have had 12 goals - instead they shoot like I do in mens league

[Cat lover]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

I think the last goal might have gone off a Vermont D but at that point the game was over. How many times in the game last night was there a
turnover or bouncing puck in Colgates zone that found a Vermont stick? It seems like every time we got a turnover that could have givin a prime
scoring chance the puck would go right to a Colgate player. That 2nd goal took the life out of the team who up to that point had outplayed Colgate
but like most nights this year they cant finish what chances they get thus letting the other team stay one play away from taking control of the game.

Brickley looked much better and his line was as good as any this year at creating scoring chances, the Reynolds line as well spent alot of time in the
off zone in the first 2 periods.

The Colgate goalie was very good and those 27 saves in the first 2 periods were not a bunch of long easy shots.

[catmandoo]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

I like the younger forwards, there just is no leadership on this team from the upperclassman. Having McCarthy out hurts big, Stalberg is doing what he can with little help, but right now this is a freshman/sophmore offense. Defensively, they are very below average, and I think that is why Mackenzie is playing with reckless abandon, as a captain perhaps feeling like he needs to do too much. One big problem I can see is goaltending. Madore is either off or on. When he is playing well the team in front of him plays quite a bit better, when he isn't we see all kinds of havoc.

I think the real issue so far has been lack of effort, or misguided effort anyways. This team rarely out hustles and out works the other team. I was a little surprised at Sneddons "We need to be cheerleaders" type attitude. I was thinking it was going to be two a days, but for now I will still give Sneddon the benefit of the doubt as he is the guy in the locker room. Maybe it is a confidence issue, if so the win at UMass and upcoming ECAC games ought to give them a boost there.

If Sneddon can pick up a top goalie recruit this team should be fine next year as I still think the offense is good just too young right now.

You may want to take a look at the stats so far this year. Stats lie for one game but not for 1/3rd a season. The defense is not the problem. Pointing a finger there is easy especially with three freshman in the line-up. I actually like the potential there alot. I thought Paliotta and Doerring were both good last night.

Here are the facts though:

The scoring offense is 3rd from the bottom in all of college hockey averaging 2.0 goals a game. You won't win many games scoring two a night in College Hockey. The D have scored 3 of the 22 total goals this year so that means the forwards have scored 19 goals total of which 9 are on pp and one eng and one shorthanded. That leaves 7 5-5 goals and the d have 3 of them and HT lenz (A self proclaimed 3-4th line guy on any other team) has two. As I said before, the forwards are way below average. Very few of them have any major skill and most of them from what I can see have limited hockey sense. They can skate but so can Dan Jansen. I think if they can keep the four underclassmen d arround for a few years, they are gonna have a strong core to build arround. They need to address the recruiting situation up front in a hurry..its bad. In addition, we have to get out of the role of taking everyone elses wounded soldiers...that is a recruitng cop out. I.E. "If you arent good enough to play for school X, you arent good enough to pay for us", "If you are a problem for the coaching staff at School Y, you are going to be a problem here and we dont want you"

Again, I think Sneddon has what it takes but I think there has to be a change becuase as someone else stated on here, as soon as mitchell left its all gone down hill.

[jcarter7669]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

You may want to take a look at the stats so far this year. Stats lie for one game but not for 1/3rd a season.

Stats are pretty much useless, you can twist them to say pretty much anything. Moreover, you really didn't read my post did you. I said the younger forwards, you know as in the freshman/sophmore. The forwards that make up 2 of the top 3 scorers on the team, because as I said there are no upper classmen providing offense short of Stalberg. Reynolds has half of a great rookie campaign already while our Senior Captain has a single point.

I think the D are playing great....for their experience level.

As for your recruiting comment, I'm just going to disagree and leave it at that.

[UVM Cat in Texas]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

C'mon guys, let's play a solid game today, finish scoring chances, and come away with a W. We oughta be able to beat Dartmouth, right? Go Cats Go.

[UVM Cat in Texas]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

Stats are pretty much useless, you can twist them to say pretty much anything.

True in part, but all sports don't keep copious stats data without a reason. The Cats have a perennial problem scoring goals, and this year is no exception. Reynolds & Brickley provide some hope for more scoring in the future. Losing McCarthy certainly didn't help. Stalberg needs to score more! Our senior captain may have only a single point, but nobody expected him to score anyway.

[GreenCat]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

In College Hockey, the MAIN recruiter is the 1st assistant = Micheletto. He's from Chicago and basically tries to recruit out of the USHL when everyone and their uncle knows the bluechippers from that league go to the CCHA/WCHA. So, guess what, we get the fourth rate talent? BU/BC win the Massachusetts sweepstakes. So what to do? GO EVERYWHERE!! Sneddon knows this. He coached at Union and got the UVM job on the basis of his ability to overachieve with limited talent. Now, he's gone to a Hockey East school with an unbelievable environment (i.e. Burlington VT - UVM) to create a D-I powerhouse and it ain't happening. Because there's no talent son.

Anyone notice that Ted Donato just picked up another Quebec recruit out of midget hockey in Quebec (we're talking 15 yrs old people; check the Heisenberg site). So UVM loses 3 Biega brothers and Louis Leblanc to HAHVAHD. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN? Oops, Yann Cisse and Alex Chiasson at Boston University?!? Because apparently we don't recruit in our "home state" any more. Who knows, maybe the UVM coaching staff could identify a St. Louis/Perrin/McKell/Ducharme/Perrault/Boyce/Draper/Patterson/Tremblay/Mitchell if they bothered to recruit in the only place where they should ALWAYS WIN? It might mean learning how to speak French. It might mean hanging out in remote corners of the province that are straight out of Deliverance (or as we might understand it to be Newport Vt or perhaps Jeffersonville? . My point being, the coaches are not working hard enough. WHO do you think you are? Certainly not someone who is permanently employable because your recruiting effort have yielded NOTTA.....Beat the bushes...WORK HARDER....Figure out where your bread and butter is you Ivy League (Sneddon, Micheletto) idiots -- common sense??

Actually Chiasson and Cisse came out of the USHL in Iowa so theoretically Micheletto should be right there. Clearly lost the recruiting battle. I do agree to some extent though with your post. I also think Sneddon has no offensive creativity or abilities to coach these guys up (or the assistants either). Even with many players coming in with good offensive stats they end up fizzling at UVM. Maybe it's skill but it appears to be more than that to me.

[catmandoo]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

Actually Chiasson and Cisse came out of the USHL in Iowa so theoretically Micheletto should be right there. Clearly lost the recruiting battle. I do agree to some extent though with your post. I also think Sneddon has no offensive creativity or abilities to coach these guys up (or the assistants either). Even with many players coming in with good offensive stats they end up fizzling at UVM. Maybe it's skill but it appears to be more than that to me.

They were both commited before they went to the USHL. Nice win for the cats today but it was a really ugly game. Two bad teams.

[snwbrdr]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

We have the talent to compete - we are just very young and the chemistry is not there yet. We have two seniors and three juniors skating. Losing McCarthy is very painful. We played even with BU and we outplayed the last three opponents (should have beaten Colgate but we got no bounces).

This may not be our year but the future is bright.

[PuckVoice]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

Ted Ryan of the Free Press talks UVM/Maine with George Commo and Jack Healey on The Really Big Sports Show ... that is Friday morning at nine (or anytime after that on the Archive) at NSNradio.net .

[snwbrdr]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

This thread is deader than our chances to score on a power play......

UVM needs some points this weekend - note plural as in more than one - or you can pretty much do the write-up on them missing the HE playoffs for the first time.

When does the new coach bounce wear off for UML and PC? Not soon enough it would seem. But rather than wishing they were worse than we are - we need better team play out of our relatively talented UVM team.

Go Cats.

[jcarter7669]

Re: 2011-12 Vermont Season Thread (Vezina & Conn Smyth trophy edition)

This thread is deader than our chances to score on a power play......

.

:-(