UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

[wildcatdc]

Just a heads up to those going to the UML game Friday it starts at 6...
Also curious STH what were your feelings about the SNUH game as far as buying on on our own as opposed to having them included?

I like having the option rather than have it included. My $0.02

[HockeyRef]

I like having the option rather than have it included. My $0.02

Yeah I'm with you. Some didn't like the fees associated with TicketMaster(and neither do I ). I was under the impression that a majority of STH's when surveyed wanted the option. No biggie just convo. Curious about the attendance it seemed like a lot of the lower bowl filled in.

Anyway hope to catch up soon!

[Scott]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

Yeah I'm with you. Some didn't like the fees associated with TicketMaster(and neither do I ). I was under the impression that a majority of STH's when surveyed wanted the option. No biggie just convo. Curious about the attendance it seemed like a lot of the lower bowl filled in.

Anyway hope to catch up soon!

Same here. We had all intentions of going, but decided we would wait and buy the tickets at SNHU Arena (knowing full well that there was absolute 0% chance of the game selling out ). Because of the weather on Thursday, my wife's high school gymnastics team had their meet re-scheduled to Friday PM, she went to the meet and I stayed home and watched the game online

[HockeyRef]

Same here. We had all intentions of going, but decided we would wait and buy the tickets at SNHU Arena (knowing full well that there was absolute 0% chance of the game selling out ). Because of the weather on Thursday, my wife's high school gymnastics team had their meet re-scheduled to Friday PM, she went to the meet and I stayed home and watched the game online

Sounds like a good plan to avoid the fees! Guess Friday's game is early as it's going to be televised is this a NESN game I wonder?

On another note Chuck did you see your DRW's battle back today against the Leafs? A JvR turnover led to the tying goal but Matthews scored in the OT..seems the Leafs have been there before only to have a team come back as I recall 😉 What a game!

[Chuck Murray]

No moral victories for DRW ... but at least the alumni team won!

On another note Chuck did you see your DRW's battle back today against the Leafs? A JvR turnover led to the tying goal but Matthews scored in the OT..seems the Leafs have been there before only to have a team come back as I recall 😉 What a game!

The playoffs streak for DRW is done and cooked this year. I wouldn't be shocked to see them finish last in the conference, to be honest. The old guard is too old and slow, the new guard isn't good enough. Too many young guys who GM Holland was betting on to carry the team into the future (i.e. Tatar, Nyquist, Smith, DeKeyser, etc.) just aren't good enough. This year just shows how much they depended upon Datsyuk these last few seasons. This season was DOA once he decided to return to Russia. It's been a great ride, but their fall-off since the '08 Cup has not been all that unlike the UNH decline. Slow but steady, and now it's time for a full scale rebuild.

The alumni game was a fun but wistfully painful reminder of the DRW glory days. C'est la vie.

[riverchief1]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

Sounds like a good plan to avoid the fees! Guess Friday's game is early as it's going to be televised is this a NESN game I wonder?

Yes, Friday's game is 6:00 because of that horrible Hockey East tv deal with the American Sports Network. NESN will produce it but it's shown nationwide on ASN which would be fine except for the odd start times of these games. A 6:00 game and a later game, thus the early start. Sucks for people on Friday who work as it pretty much makes it impossible to get to the game. Lowell has another ASN game later in the season, its last home regular season game vs BC on a Friday that doesn't start until 8:30 which means a late evening.

[bostonewe]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

With the real schedule approaching scoring is going to become more of a problem. My prediction is that TK endures the same fate that Poturalski suffered last year, cleaned up against the weaker schedule and then disappeared.

While not the best player, I believe Hill deserves more credit and opportunity to have a more on-ice leadership role. Though he has taken a few dumb penalties over the years, he is consistent with both the forecheck and backcheck, while not being afraid to get into the dirty areas. I'd give him a shot with TK on the first line along with a bigger body like Vela or Eiserman. My sanity could be questioned but looking at the Blackhawks, first line is Hartman (rookie), Toews, and Motte (rookie).

I'm surprised to hear you say that. I've been to about half the games this season, including the one at the Verizon and I'm not a fan of Jamie Hill. I feel like he doesn't have a good eye for following the puck and can't follow through when presented with scoring opportunities. I don't know what his leadership skills are like, but I'm surprised that you'd put him on the top line, especially with Eiserman as both are prone to dumb penalties.

I also felt like Nazarian was getting pushed around quite a bit more on Friday than I had seen him do previously. I don't know if it's lingering from an injury or what, but I thought that Maine was able to push him off the puck several times, and where Kelleher can stick-handle and maneuver, Nazarian can't.

I felt horrible for Tirone on Friday night. The D hung him out to dry several times and, with a lesser goalie, the game would have been tied or worse. He made some really great saves.

Good interview ... not surprisingly, Coach Souza is more optimistic than most of us are about his team's chances for the D-1 tourney this year, but what caught my eye was his explanation about how he thought this year's team was defending better as a team. Having seen most of last night's game in Manchester (we did miss the two early goals), and conceding that Dawson was out with Chanter taking his place ... I have to say, the overall UNH defensive zone coverage was horrid. It seemed that all night long, UMaine players were left all alone in the slot, time after time, and at even strength more so than on the PK. UMaine also constantly parked guys in front of Tirone, and the UNH defenders overall did a lousy job of clearing out that space. Look at the goals UNH allowed - and more importantly, look at the top quality saves Tirone had to make at key junctures of the game to keep UNH either even or slightly ahead. Without those saves, UNH loses.

I'm not a huge fan of Dawson either, I'm not sure Chanter is such a downgrade. I actually thought the defense was worse than some of the games I'd seen earlier in the season. I have high hopes for Wyse, but some of the others are really quite awful.

[Chuck Murray]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

WIS Productions brings you the New Year's '17 edition of "Umile's Last Stand - The _____ for 600".

"Umile's Last Stand - The Quest for 600"

Coach Umile's current career wins total: 580
Wins Remaining to the next round number: 20
*Games Remaining (Next 2 Seasons - Min.): 54
Win Pct. Required to Hit Target: 37%
WIS Estimated Likelihood of Success: 67%
2016/2017 Cupcake Conversion Ratio (CCR): 8/14 (57.1%)

* - minimum games remaining assumes 34 regular season games, and at least 2 games in the MBPBEGAM "playoffs"

The curtain fell on the 2016 portion of season with the annual trip to ManchVegas last Friday night, where UNH completed a season sweep over archrivals UMaine with an opportunistic 6-4 win in the "Riverstone Classic". These first-game-back-from-break games have usually been tricky ones for UNH, and without some heroic efforts in goal from Danny Tirone when the game was still in the balance, this is one the 'Cats easily could have let slip away. But a win is a win is a win, and another great game from UNH's emerging Hobey frontrunner Tyler Kelleher made sure the 'Cats earned their 9th win of the season before the calendar turned its page to 2017.

The Big Picture - WIS experts' projection that Coach Umile's Wildcats would amass at least 10 wins in the opening 18 games of the season missed the mark, but with a 9-7-2 record the boys were close enough to at least keep hope alive, and the 'Cats should reach the 10 win mark sometime this coming weekend - more likely against Brown at Providence than on Friday night at home vs. UMass Lowell. WIS is now setting the line at 3.5 additional HE wins, and has set a secondary line of 1.5 wins in the MBPGEGAM "playoffs". As Coach Umile needs to find a way to the 14-15 win range this season to keep things on track with The Quest ending on a happy note in Winter 2018, the importance of taking W's out of the final two OOC games is obvious. The Dartmouth loss was a setback, but a 3rd straight win over UMaine sets things up for the Brown OOC finale. Nothing I saw at Friday night's game makes me think our conference prospects have improved.

Predictions:

Friday (Jan. 6th): UMass Lowell 4 @ UNH 1
Saturday (Jan. 7th): UNH 6 Brown 1

NEXT (LAST?) CUPCAKE ON THE SHELF: 1/7/17 @ Brown ... none on the horizon afterwards

IS BS35+4 PAYING ATTENTION YET?

Paying attention? Yes. Worried? Heck, no. UNH enters the second half of the season fresh off a 3-game season sweep of the archrival UMaine Black Bears, and with the 'Cats 2 games north of the .500 mark with an artificially high HE placement owing to getting all the easy games against the bottom rung teams out of the way. Even those dolts at WIS are predicting UNH will be right on target for the minimum expected 15 win projection that will cover just over half of the remaining wins needed at the start of this season to get Coach to his own personal "promised land". Visions of wasted cupcakes are no longer dancing in his head - if they ever were in the first place - and winnable games against Northeastern loom over the horizon for the weekend after next. Now ... UNH Hoops losing to Dartmouth, allowing bragging rights to go to the cross-state rivals for the two main Winter sports ... that's enough to draw some unfavorable attention across the street. And whenever attention is being paid on the other side of Main St. these days ... it's all good for our outgoing iconic hockey coach.

Happy New Year to all ... and let's hope we're playing games after the MBPBEGAM when St. Pat's Day arrives!!

[Scott]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

WIS Productions brings you the New Year's '17 edition of "Umile's Last Stand - The _____ for 600".

"Umile's Last Stand - The Quest for 600"

Coach Umile's current career wins total: 580
Wins Remaining to the next round number: 20
*Games Remaining (Next 2 Seasons - Min.): 54
Win Pct. Required to Hit Target: 37%
WIS Estimated Likelihood of Success: 67%
2016/2017 Cupcake Conversion Ratio (CCR): 8/14 (57.1%)

* - minimum games remaining assumes 34 regular season games, and at least 2 games in the MBPBEGAM "playoffs"

The curtain fell on the 2016 portion of season with the annual trip to ManchVegas last Friday night, where UNH completed a season sweep over archrivals UMaine with an opportunistic 6-4 win in the "Riverstone Classic". These first-game-back-from-break games have usually been tricky ones for UNH, and without some heroic efforts in goal from Danny Tirone when the game was still in the balance, this is one the 'Cats easily could have let slip away. But a win is a win is a win, and another great game from UNH's emerging Hobey frontrunner Tyler Kelleher made sure the 'Cats earned their 9th win of the season before the calendar turned its page to 2017.

The Big Picture - WIS experts' projection that Coach Umile's Wildcats would amass at least 10 wins in the opening 18 games of the season missed the mark, but with a 9-7-2 record the boys were close enough to at least keep hope alive, and the 'Cats should reach the 10 win mark sometime this coming weekend - more likely against Brown at Providence than on Friday night at home vs. UMass Lowell. WIS is now setting the line at 3.5 additional HE wins, and has set a secondary line of 1.5 wins in the MBPGEGAM "playoffs". As Coach Umile needs to find a way to the 14-15 win range this season to keep things on track with The Quest ending on a happy note in Winter 2018, the importance of taking W's out of the final two OOC games is obvious. The Dartmouth loss was a setback, but a 3rd straight win over UMaine sets things up for the Brown OOC finale. Nothing I saw at Friday night's game makes me think our conference prospects have improved.

Predictions:

Friday (Jan. 6th): UMass Lowell 4 @ UNH 1
Saturday (Jan. 7th): UNH 6 Brown 1

NEXT (LAST?) CUPCAKE ON THE SHELF: 1/7/17 @ Brown ... none on the horizon afterwards

IS BS35+4 PAYING ATTENTION YET?

Paying attention? Yes. Worried? Heck, no. UNH enters the second half of the season fresh off a 3-game season sweep of the archrival UMaine Black Bears, and with the 'Cats 2 games north of the .500 mark with an artificially high HE placement owing to getting all the easy games against the bottom rung teams out of the way. Even those dolts at WIS are predicting UNH will be right on target for the minimum expected 15 win projection that will cover just over half of the remaining wins needed at the start of this season to get Coach to his own personal "promised land". Visions of wasted cupcakes are no longer dancing in his head - if they ever were in the first place - and winnable games against Northeastern loom over the horizon for the weekend after next. Now ... UNH Hoops losing to Dartmouth, allowing bragging rights to go to the cross-state rivals for the two main Winter sports ... that's enough to draw some unfavorable attention across the street. And whenever attention is being paid on the other side of Main St. these days ... it's all good for our outgoing iconic hockey coach.

Happy New Year to all ... and let's hope we're playing games after the MBPBEGAM when St. Pat's Day arrives!!

Chuck,

Lest we forget - Dartmouth football's come-from-behind win over Coach Mac and his legions back in September....first Big Green win over UNH football since the Carter Administration.

[Chuck Murray]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

Chuck,

Lest we forget - Dartmouth football's come-from-behind win over Coach Mac and his legions back in September....first Big Green win over UNH football since the Carter Administration.

Good point, Scott. And the sad thing for us is ... the Hockey loss was probably the least of the 3 upsets.

[Drew S.]

The playoffs streak for DRW is done and cooked this year. I wouldn't be shocked to see them finish last in the conference, to be honest. The old guard is too old and slow, the new guard isn't good enough. Too many young guys who GM Holland was betting on to carry the team into the future (i.e. Tatar, Nyquist, Smith, DeKeyser, etc.) just aren't good enough. This year just shows how much they depended upon Datsyuk these last few seasons. This season was DOA once he decided to return to Russia. It's been a great ride, but their fall-off since the '08 Cup has not been all that unlike the UNH decline. Slow but steady, and now it's time for a full scale rebuild.

The alumni game was a fun but wistfully painful reminder of the DRW glory days. C'est la vie.

2008? They've been declining since 2002. The 2002 team absolutely hammers the 2008 team, it wouldn't be close at all. The saving grace for the Wings has been the quality of other teams dropping. I'm likely in the minority and was obviously spoiled growing up but it's hard for me to have much interest in the NHL anymore.

[Chuck Murray]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

2008? They've been declining since 2002. The 2002 team absolutely hammers the 2008 team, it wouldn't be close at all. The saving grace for the Wings has been the quality of other teams dropping. I'm likely in the minority and was obviously spoiled growing up but it's hard for me to have much interest in the NHL anymore.

Totally agree. The salary cap changed things for sure. But they bounced back for another Cup in '08 and missed repeating in '09 by the slightest of margins. That's to the great credit of Coach Babcock, and to the younger guys from the '02 team who ascended to prominent leadership roles with the teams that split a pair of SCF's with Pittsburgh at the end of the last decade. It also bought Kenny Holland time, with the belief, hey, he's re-tooled on the fly once before, he can do it again. If only. His last shot at pulling that off was when he took a run at the Parise-Suter FA pairing a few years ago, but failed when they both eventually landed in Minnesota.

So now Datsyuk is gone, Babcock is gone, Parise/Suter never arrived, Kronwall was never Lidstrom, and Ericsson was never Kronwall. DDK is a nice piece and a strong second pair guy, but they've been asking him to be a top pair guy. Holland signed Franzen long term when he should've re-signed Hossa (pure bad luck). Howard has never really blossomed. Now Mrazek's development seems to be stalled. Larkin is expected to be the new Zetterberg, which is unfair. Sheahan teased us for a year or two, but has fallen off. I'm not sure what happened with Nyquist and Tatar, other than Datsyuk leaving and age catching Z. And now Coach Blashill isn't looking so much like the Babcock clone he was sold on us to be. And Holland has pretty much used up any of his remaining goodwill. He's probably got one last move left in him - probably to ditch Blashill, and hope/pray to hit a home run with his replacement - or else it will be his time to walk the plank. And such a darned shame timing-wise, as they're about to move into a new hockey palace next Fall, and with the crappiest team they've had on display since the early Yzerman era. At least the building will sell tickets for a couple of seasons.

But if the question is whether the Bowman era teams would beat the Babcock era teams, the an$wer I$ hand$ down, ye$. We now return you to your normal UNH Wildcats discussion.

[Darius]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

We now return you to your normal UNH Wildcats discussion.

???

[Chuck Murray]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

Figured I'd drag this post from the UMaine thread over to here to share some sad news ...

Not many folks posting on here any more but long time Maine fan and owner of the listserv Hockey L, Wayne Smith has passed away. Before USCHO and what ever other social media place came into existence a list serv was the way to talk about college hockey thru EMail. When I first discovered Hockey L I was some excited. There is a world of hockey outside of Orono and here was a way to learn about it. Wayne is an Orono boy and I've known him for many years. Wayne loved Maine hockey and Alfond won't be the same without him in the Balcony. RIP Wayne

Nice article about Wayne and Hockey L http://www.collegehockeynews.com/new..._treasured.php

The linked article is a worthwhile read. I arrived on the Internet in the early days of USCHO, and missed out on Hockey L's heyday, but it's hard to explain to anyone under the age of 35 what the world was like before the Internet. I know many of the old timers still on here were Hockey L subscribers (or whatever the term was/is?), and its impact can still be felt and seen here at USCHO and most everything that's followed in its wake.

RIP Wayne Smith - never had the pleasure of meeting you (at least knowingly, in our alias-filled cyber-universe) but my heartfelt thanks and appreciation for what you've added to our lives in the college hockey world.

[HockeyRef]

Re: UNH Wildcats 2016-17 Vol II -- We Do Have a Hockey Season Here!?!

Way to go TyK!!!

http://hockeyeastonline.com/men/pres...701/jan4mh.php