Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

[solovsfett]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

boy the product eaves is putting on the ice is just awful. speaking of in state players we are getting the wrong ones, condon, costello, mccormick all playing else where, but we have six instate forwards that can't bury a puck at all.

you mean little, little, meuer, dahl, hartzog, and .... yeah I hear ya. Condon was low-balled apparently. and for out-of state guys UW couldn't land Reilly Smith, and...either wasn't interested in Ben Hanowski or whiffed...

that bs and it needs to stop immediately. meaning Eaves has to change the recruiting tactics now and they need to work asap (like w/in 2-3 years) or we're looking at 2002-3 all over again.

[bucky15]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

and this is the reason I say I want improvement in recruiting from Eaves NOW. they'll need 3 consecutive Kerdiles/Zulinick classes and have to have a couple of Smith/McDonagh/Gardiner's in there as well (none in the queue that I can see just yet) and that is asking a ton.

How special/lucky were we to be able to watch Smith/McDon/Gardiner/Schultz/Cody G as our top 5 D? You can even toss Ramage in the mix, because he was amazing his Freshman year. That team would crush...I mean CRUSH this years team.

[Gurtholfin]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

How special/lucky were we to be able to watch Smith/McDon/Gardiner/Schultz/Cody G as our top 5 D? You can even toss Ramage in the mix, because he was amazing his Freshman year. That team would crush...I mean CRUSH this years team.

And as good as that was, the 06 team would have had their way with those guys.

I sure am glad that I stopped to smell the roses from 04-ish through 06 as that may not happen again for quite some time. Very special group.

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

It's scary to imagine how good the title team would've been if Elliott was healthy all season and if Piskula never got hurt.

Oh, to have problems like that once again...

[bucky15]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

And as good as that was, the 06 team would have had their way with those guys.

I sure am glad that I stopped to smell the roses from 04-ish through 06 as that may not happen again for quite some time. Very special group.

Both of those teams had a buzz about them that made going to the Kohl Center a special experience. I think it may be awhile before another group like these two teams comes around again.

[Hammy]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

and before gopher fans chime in on this (and I appreciate the input honestly), let me add this caveat... there is a huge difference between UW's woes now and UMN's woes of the prior 3 years.

mainly this...UMN had supreme top 10 overall talent on paper for those years, possibly top 5 overall. So their failure had a lot to do w/development and lack of cohesion amongst star-type players.

The big difference in this year's Gophers is getting Guentzel back. I don't think you can underestimate the importance of having a real take charge, strong coach with excellent recruiting skills as the 2nd in command. Especially when he comes from within your program and has a lot of passion for it. Never underestimate the impact of the assistant coaches. They are too overlooked by media when the talk of recruiting and development goes on. Media always focuses on the head coach and that is only partially accurate. It's not a one man show in that regard.

[solovsfett]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

And as good as that was, the 06 team would have had their way with those guys.

I sure am glad that I stopped to smell the roses from 04-ish through 06 as that may not happen again for quite some time. Very special group.

yes. remember at-times the 06 team could forecheck and cycle the puck and even change one guy out while forechecking they were so tenacious and good in the O-zone it was incredible.

sigh...

Wisconsin Hockey - 2017 NCAA Champs?

[burd]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

The big difference in this year's Gophers is getting Guentzel back. I don't think you can underestimate the importance of having a real take charge, strong coach with excellent recruiting skills as the 2nd in command. Especially when he comes from within your program and has a lot of passion for it. Never underestimate the impact of the assistant coaches. They are too overlooked by media when the talk of recruiting and development goes on. Media always focuses on the head coach and that is only partially accurate. It's not a one man show in that regard.

Since they are in a postion to have a closer relationship with the players, they have a big impact on loyalty and how the players buy into the roles assigned to them.

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

yes. remember at-times the 06 team could forecheck and cycle the puck and even change one guy out while forechecking they were so tenacious and good in the O-zone it was incredible.

sigh...

Wisconsin Hockey - 2017 NCAA Champs?

At the current trend, we're closer to being Bowling Green in five years than we are to being champs.

[solovsfett]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

The big difference in this year's Gophers is getting Guentzel back. I don't think you can underestimate the importance of having a real take charge, strong coach with excellent recruiting skills as the 2nd in command. Especially when he comes from within your program and has a lot of passion for it. Never underestimate the impact of the assistant coaches. They are too overlooked by media when the talk of recruiting and development goes on. Media always focuses on the head coach and that is only partially accurate. It's not a one man show in that regard.

excellent point, you and TimothyA may be on to something w/the assistant coaches perhaps not being up to par. since butters is the D-coach and the D sucks and isn't developing I'd say he's doing a terrible job.

Shuchuk is the recruiter: none of the frosh (his guys) are lighting it up, I'd call them quite average including LaBate. Next season's class is better at Forward and solid on d (perhaps average, we'll see) but they'd need 2 more of these classes AND to have the assistants and Eaves develop them into better players which isn't happening now and it's shocking given Eaves' track record from 2010 and prior

[Almington]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

you mean little, little, meuer, dahl, hartzog, and .... yeah I hear ya. Condon was low-balled apparently. and for out-of state guys UW couldn't land Reilly Smith, and...either wasn't interested in Ben Hanowski or whiffed...

that bs and it needs to stop immediately. meaning Eaves has to change the recruiting tactics now and they need to work asap (like w/in 2-3 years) or we're looking at 2002-3 all over again.

Seriously, you expect Eaves to be able to predict the future with every recruit? How would you fix recruiting? You have 18 scholarships to spread across 26+ players and saying get more talented players isn't a solution- HOW would you get more offensively talented players to attend UW?

As for consistency, in my experience the number ONE factor in on-ice consistency is coaching staff consistency since the players turn over so quickly. How many assistants has Eaves gone though in 10 years? How many have those other schools gone through? Isn't Hackstol STILL with his first set of assistants? Pearson was at UMI for 20+ years before he left to take the MTU job. Gwoz has turned over assistant coaches, but at a fairly slow pace. Both BU and BC have 1st assistant coaches who are long tenured at the school. It seems that Eaves is turning over assistants on almost a yearly basis. That type of turn over is going to hurt with both recruiting and with the on-ice product.

How many different assistant coaches has Johnson had as the woman's coach over the same time period? A total of 3 (not including Peter Johnson who was an assistant during the 09-10 season while Mark was HC for the US Olympic team). That is the type of continuity that is needed on the men's side to get more consistent on the ice.

[markwojo]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Take a deep breath before jumping head long off the bandwagon. Once Smith and Murray left, if your expectations were anything more then battling for the last home ice spot and something a little over .500, well you just weren't being realistic. Lengthy injuries to Lee and McCabe did not help in the least either. We can argue whether that should ever be the case at UW given the history, facilities, game day atmosphere, ect, but the fact is virtually every team in the country goes through some ups and downs. That is the nature of the beast where success gets you losing kids to the NHL, Canadian Juniors can come in real late and pick off a kid the Summer before they are to show up, and to put it bluntly...there are many very attractive options for good hockey players to go to school in addition to UW.

All that said, this team is not that far off. For those of you that want to sing the virtues of the '06 title team, you must have forgotten how aweful we were in '02-03 (Burish had 6 assists in 19 games) and how '03-'04 was pretty mediocre when the rest of the backbone of the national title team was taking it's lumps as underclassmen. The '06 title team was the culmination of a journey for an awesome upperclass that did not look so awesome their first couple years on campus. Trick was, you injected a couple game breakers in Earl and Pavs who got the benefit of playing with a big group of upperclassmen that had been through the battles. Call me crazy, but when you interject Kerdies, Zullnick and Wittchow next fall....the Badger may be real close to the same thing as the '04-05 team...still not sniffing a title...but plenty of pieces in place to grow into a title contender the following season.

Ramage has been real disappointing this season...he is real bad a times. Rumpel is the furthest thing from our problems at this point. Yes, I did not like Hanowski's second goal as his angle was aweful and a decent Pee Wee could have hit that net, but he has been in general very solid this season and will only get better. Simonelli and Faust are both decent and show some flashes....if Ramage were playing like a junior captain should...they would be even better. McCabe has the tools to be very special, but his injury really stunted what he might have been at this point otherwise. Barnes, Zengerle, & Mersch are good to very good college players already. LaBate, Paape, Meuer, and Woods have some tools and in the next couple seasons likely grow into very good college players. Add in Zullnick and Kerdies and you have an excellent top 3 lines.

[solovsfett]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Seriously, you expect Eaves to be able to predict the future with every recruit? How would you fix recruiting? You have 18 scholarships to spread across 26+ players and saying get more talented players isn't a solution- HOW would you get more offensively talented players to attend UW?

As for consistency, in my experience the number ONE factor in on-ice consistency is coaching staff consistency since the players turn over so quickly. How many assistants has Eaves gone though in 10 years? How many have those other schools gone through? Isn't Hackstol STILL with his first set of assistants? Pearson was at UMI for 20+ years before he left to take the MTU job. Gwoz has turned over assistant coaches, but at a fairly slow pace. Both BU and BC have 1st assistant coaches who are long tenured at the school. It seems that Eaves is turning over assistants on almost a yearly basis. That type of turn over is going to hurt with both recruiting and with the on-ice product.

How many different assistant coaches has Johnson had as the woman's coach over the same time period? A total of 3 (not including Peter Johnson who was an assistant during the 09-10 season while Mark was HC for the US Olympic team). That is the type of continuity that is needed on the men's side to get more consistent on the ice.

consistency in assistant coaches like Year 1 through 4? weren't there about 4 different assistants in that time? and that team was on a dramatic arc upwards. Suter, Earl, Pavelski, Skille (3rd liner I'd add on that NCAA team), high marquee guys committed quickly. back then it didn't seem to matter that ward and hynes and whomever else were only around for about 2 seasons.

as for changing recruiting how about fixing the major problem. stop playing cheap, and stop offering to average players. as a hypothetical what would happen if you send this entire team to Jeff Jackson, Gwoz or Lucia right now and how many get sent packing? How many? I'd say 10-12. so right there I'm saying it and have said it, the team is stockpiled w/average players and grinders, players w/limited ceilings. STOP recruiting those types for the love of god. maybe Eaves now thinks he's Bo Ryan and can take 5 of us out of the stands and magically make us great

landing Grimaldi, Fasching, Cammaratta (yeah, yeah UW had not shot), Jordan Schmaltz (if it was OZ leaving that put him off why didn't he follow Oz o tOSU?) would help but I have no idea if Eaves goes after these guys hard and is whiffing on them or what. I do recall Chuck or someone stating they'd moved away from recruiting top flight talent at forward but I don't recall why (this was about 07ish)

Also, how about getting the average players that there's such an over abundance of to develop?

right now UW is being out-recruited by: BC, BU, Denver, Minnesota, UND, Michigan, Notre Dame and quite possibly CC, UNO, UMD and Miami as well. that's ridiculous.

[BUmutt]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

Hey Badgers fans. Here is my article on Nic Kerdiles. Hope you like it. Also, please share this with as many people as you can. Would be greatly appreciated.

http://thehockeywriters.com/nic-kerd...ornia-dreamin/

[MW4Bucky&SNC]

Re: Wisconsin Hockey: Vol. XX - Growth Through Experience

I'm not going to go back and read everything everyone has to say because I know the debate is getting interesting. Last night was an inexcusable embarassment. Yes the officiating was horse **** but you still have to react with some composure. After the easy missed call immediately leading up to the first goal and the call against Ramage that anyone with a functioning brain knows was awful they completely lost their focus and composure. The Woods' hit was North Dakota dirty and just has no place in this program.

Now, to the overarching subject. Here is my personal philosophy for a program set up to legitimately contend regularly like the Badgers are. A National Championship gets you 4 years of a heat-free seat and a Frozen Four gets you 2. Next year if we are looking at a team who is headed for another NCAA-free season I have no problem throwing a few logs in the fire under his seat. Do others have certain bench marks as to how much time certain accomplishments give you?