UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Barn

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

This email was sent to UNO fans and supporters this weekend by Trev Alberts:

Dear Maverick Hockey Fans,

I want to personally thank you for your ongoing commitment to Omaha hockey and our athletic department. Our inaugural season in the NCHC was successful and while we fell short in our attempt at a conference championship, we are proud of how well our team represented UNO and Omaha. Below are a few noteworthy accomplishments:

Finished Third – Pre-season picked eighth
Josh Archibald – Top 10 Hobey Baker Finalist and NCHC Player of the Year
Jake Guentzel – Rookie of the Year finalist
Dean Blais – NCHC Coach of the Year finalist

I am well aware that our success is largely dependent on the support of our fans and community. I continue to be humbled by the consistent and on-going support of this community from the inception of our program until now. One indicator of that support is attendance. I recently observed an article on USCHO.com regarding men’s hockey attendance for the 2013-2014 season, I thought you might be interested. Please see the attached document.

Omaha hockey continues to be one of the great national success stories in college hockey! Our program finished with a higher per-game average than Boston College, Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Boston University, and that is all because of our great fans. Additionally, please note the attendance of NCHC members. Five of our members finished in the top 11 nationally in attendance, putting us in very good company.

We are very proud of the program that each of you has helped to build, and we take our responsibility as stewards of the program very seriously. We continue to feel that we are in the best conference in college hockey, led by the best coach in college hockey, and we look forward to competing in the best venue for college hockey very soon.

Trev


TREV ALBERTS | Director of Athletics
University of Nebraska Omaha Athletics
6001 Dodge St | FH 202 | Omaha, NE | 68182
Office: 402-554-2305 | FAX: 402-554-2555
Facebook | Twitter | OMavs.com | OmahasTeam.com

Since Trev obviously frequents USCHO.com it's my sincere hope that he takes what is intended as constructive criticism here about our program to heart.

He needs to be more visible and what is going on within the program needs to be far more transparent than it is, now.

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

Now, Coach Blais sounds like he is thinking Jaycob Megna is going to leave as well:

http://www.omaha.com/article/2014032...is-turning-pro

Question before the house.

If you are a star-player-Hobey-Baker-candidate-senior-to-be and you play for a school that has what is, on paper, the best recruiting class in school history coming in (minus the goalie that it desperately needs), wouldn't you give serious consideration to staying and maybe actually winning that award while also taking a shot at winning an NCAA championship--and get your degree, besides?

I know I would. The money isn't going anywhere. And, you might not ever play in the NHL. Most won't.

Since this keeps happening here my suspicion is that either Coach Blais is recruiting bad character guys who are all about the money or these guys aren't buying into what he is selling and want out after getting a first-hand look at it. I hope I am wrong on both counts but that is sure what it is starting to look like around here to me.

Here is a list of the guys that have recently jumped ship:

Terry Broadhurst, Alex Broadhurst (academic ineligibility in his case), Jayson Megna, Andres Sustr, Anthony Stolarz, Tony Turgeon, Mike Taffe, Andrew Schmit (transfer to Miami), Fredrik Bergman, Josh Archibald, and now, possibly, Jaycob Megna? And, this is just in the last two seasons! That's a lot of players. It's not like any of these guys made the jump right to the NHL, either.

This problem was almost non-existent before Coach Blais arrived on the scene and right now you'd have hard time convincing me that Dean Blais is a better coach than Mike Kemp was if you didn't know anything about Coach Blais' previous tenure at North Dakota. And Coach Blais only real success here came in his 2nd season, UNO's '10-'11 tournament season, and that was mostly on the backs of Coach Kemp's players.

It will be interesting to see if his concerns about Megna are borne out.

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

Dean Blais addresses player defections and the incoming recruit class:

http://www.omaha.com/article/2014032...ter-departures

[MAVFANJEFF]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

I have little hope for next season and I won't buy a season ticket until he's gone. We both know he's not going to get fired, We'd lose most of his recruits.

Quitterbald got his first pro goal tonight. and 3rd star

[billmich88888]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

Newbies

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

Newbies

Is this supposed to mean something? If it does, I have no idea what.

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

I have little hope for next season and I won't buy a season ticket until he's gone. We both know he's not going to get fired, We'd lose most of his recruits.

Quitterbald got his first pro goal tonight. and 3rd star

Nothing is "happening" to or with Coach Blais until the end of next season, when both he and Trev's contracts run out. I am inclined to give the situation another year for reasons I have already stated, but if I renew (for my 10th season) it is going to come with reservations and expectations as well.

I've mentioned previously that the point system in place, as currently constituted for season ticket prioritization in our new building, is based on the number of consecutive years of holding season tickets. My ten seasons holding them is not continuous. Penalizing me for that, particularly in light of how relatively few people have held season tickets even that long, is unacceptable to me. If that is, in fact, going to be the case, I probably won't renew in protest. I have already made the Athletic Department aware of my extreme displeasure with this, too, and have no reply on the topic. Anybody calling me about renewing (it happens every year) is going to really get an earful from me on this one.

Couple this with some actual concerns revolving around hockey itself................a new, big one, is Coach Blais assertion in the article above that they are done recruiting. Meaning, we are not going to have competent goaltending for the foreseeable future. We have already seen what that portends over the course of this past season.

Even though, to an outsider, there surely appears to be a lot to be enthusiastic about as far as UNO hockey is concerned, there sure are a lot of unhappy Maverick fans for a lot of reasons that aren't readily identifiable if you are not seeing what is going on, first-hand. Me? The wind keeps blowing me in different directions.

This is going to be an interesting next 18 months for this program, that's for sure.

Probably about time to retire this thread for an off-season one.

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

From Husker Mike's Blasphemy about the utterly disgraceful (and extremely poor quality of what there is) treatment of UNO hockey by the local Omaha news media:

http://huskermike.blogspot.com/2014/...verage-on.html

and:

http://huskermike.blogspot.com/2014/...hought-in.html

I don't always agree with Mike's posts on his blog (yeah, Mike, I read them), but I respect his opinion and his right to have one, and he's only touching the surface where this issue is concerned. And, he's dead-on, here.

He fails to mention that the news media is now ratings driven instead of being journalistically driven, which is a part of the source of the problem where UNO is concerned here. The media here is Husker and, to a lesser degree, Creighton myopic.

Couple that with the fact that almost everybody involved in the print and news media here, with some exceptions, are not from the local area and most have not been here for a very long, either. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. In this case, one questions whether the horse is even aware of the water source.

Omaha is a secondary, tertiary kind of media market and people get promoted and sent away from here after getting their first big break by being sent here in the first place. The turnover at the local television stations is amazing when I compare it to Chicago and Kansas City, places I have lived, previously. There are still several people in the same on-air positions in Kansas City as when I left there 24 years ago. There isn't a soul here in Omaha left at any station here that has a job at the station they did when I moved here.

FWIW, this is another source of anger in the UNO constituency at the Athletic Department since UNO hockey fans place a good chunk of the blame for this squarely in the lap of Trev Alberts and company.

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark.

You know what you are doing but no one else does.

[Tipsy McStagger]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

A contract extension for Dean-o. Congrats guys!

[MavHockey14]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

I'm hearing that UNO and MSU will be playing a series in Omaha to start next year.

[MAVFANJEFF]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

I'm hearing that UNO and MSU will be playing a series in Omaha to start next year.

Where's the like button? Anyway, It would be great to see Mike Hastings come back to town and show Dean Blais how the purple cows got the better deal in the coach swap.

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

Where's the like button? Anyway, It would be great to see Mike Hastings come back to town and show Dean Blais how the purple cows got the better deal in the coach swap.

Coach Blais is now among the 5 highest paid coaches in the sport:

http://www.omaha.com/article/2014041...t-paid-coaches

............and leaves the door open to coaching another 4 seasons after this contract.

[MAVFANJEFF]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

I wouldn't be surprised if steps down after the 2015/16 season.

[MavHockey14]

Where's the like button? Anyway, It would be great to see Mike Hastings come back to town and show Dean Blais how the purple cows got the better deal in the coach swap.

We're glad to have him, and glad he's happy here. I'd love to play UNO every year!

[Red Cows]

Re: UNO '13-'14 Season Thread: Barnstorming Through a New League and Raising a New Ba

Up until this last season, UNO had played the Purple Cows every season of the UNO hockey program's existence.

As far a non-conference foe is concerned, UNO has played more game against Minnesota State Mankato than any other team in the country. It isn't even a contest. We've played 28 times as non-conference combatants (35 times overall).

If Coach Blais does stay around beyond his current new contract, as he alluded he might, I don't know, then, if I see Mike Hastings ever ending up here in that scenario.

4 years after his current new contract ends, Coach Blais would be 71 years old.

Hastings would be 56 years old 4 years after Coach Blais current contract ends. And, he'd have, at that point, a decade under his belt at Mankato if he is still there at that time. That's old enough to where he might think twice about leaving. I think a lot of it would depend on where the two programs are at the time. UNO, at that time, will be playing in much larger, almost new on-campus state-of-the-art facility that is much larger than Mankato's arena which also includes practice facilities (finally). Even if Hastings were not to return, when Coach Blais leaves there will be a big line for the job here.

However, it's worth mentioning that Coach Blais took the job here, himself, at age 58, so........................................