The Barr Has Been Raised at UMaine

[BlackBearFan19]

Ostman wasn't great this weekend, but Maine isn't where they are without him this season.

Starting Mucitelli with no game action since the calendar turned to 2023 would be negligent coaching.

Ostman has earned the right to finish out the game on an off night. He wasn’t sharp but I’ve seen worse.

Personally I think that was a smart move by the coaching staff to let him work through it and see if he can find his game heading into Wednesday.

Hats off to UMass on an impressive away series and at the end of the day we ended up in the same place in hockey east, even if we backed into it.

[J.D.]

A marriage proposal, eh? Gutsy move by Sirota!

[NorthMike]

A marriage proposal, eh? Gutsy move by Sirota!

That was awesome.
First for Maine hockey anyone know,?

Going to miss no 2, one of my favorite players to watch.
And a really sweet goal last night for him.

[Runsub5]

A marriage proposal, eh? Gutsy move by Sirota!

And she accepted! :-)

[Drew S.]

Going to be tough Friday night with no game and really sad to see the season coming to an end. Obviously Maine is a huge favorite Wednesday but if Holt, Arnott, and Bruneski are all out it’s not the sure thing it would be if they were healthy. Maine definitely has a shot Saturday but it’s hard to feel great about playing at Matthews.

[amkirby10]

Going to be tough Friday night with no game and really sad to see the season coming to an end. Obviously Maine is a huge favorite Wednesday but if Holt, Arnott, and Bruneski are all out it’s not the sure thing it would be if they were healthy. Maine definitely has a shot Saturday but it’s hard to feel great about playing at Matthews.

Not often lately I find myself agreeing with Drew, but in this case I concur. I'm considering going on Saturday night if they win on Wednesday, but Maine winning is really unlikely and I can't stand NU so it would probably just make me angry. I'm on the fence.

[Fishman'81]

[QUOTE=BlackBearFan19;n3794490]

Ostman has earned the right to finish out the game on an off night. He wasn’t sharp but I’ve seen worse.

He has his good nights. then he wets the bed.

Not the answer going forward, IMO.

[BlackBearFan19]

Not often lately I find myself agreeing with Drew, but in this case I concur. I'm considering going on Saturday night if they win on Wednesday, but Maine winning is really unlikely and I can't stand NU so it would probably just make me angry. I'm on the fence.

I’m planning to go on Saturday if they win Wednesday. Never been to Matthews and always have wanted to go. It would be cool to see a lot of Maine fans show up. I’m probably in the minority but I think Northeastern is a decent matchup.

[amkirby10]

He has his good nights. then he wets the bed.

Not the answer going forward, IMO.

I still think Ostman is a very good and capable goaltender, but your post got me interested in checking out what's in the pipeline for goalie. And I think Patriks Berzins is a guy we could get really excited about.

First thing that jumped out at me was his SV% of 0.920 while also having a GAA of 3.67, which prompted me to look at the team he was on. They went 2-41-5 this season. Now he's in the USHL playing for Tri City (24-16-5), where he's put up a 1.89 GAA and a 0.914 SV%, in the admittedly still small sample size of 7 games. He also played in the World Juniors for Latvia this past year, where he was pretty good (2.47 GAA, 0.914 SV%) for a team that only scored four (4) goals, finished last in their group, and was nearly relegated. He's also still just 19 years old as an August '03 birthday. I don't know if he'll come to Orono this coming fall, or if they'll push him back a year, but either way he has consistently put up good or better numbers on teams that have ranged from average to horrific in quality. He's one to watch in my book.

Edit: corrected Tri-City's record this season.

[amkirby10]

Researching Berzins inspired me to revisit my recruiting spreadsheet, which I hadn't updated since last June. Here's my latest version, with a few new tweaks, like the record of the player's current team, their NLI/LOI status according to the Heisenberg spreadsheet, and a few others. Stats are for the player's most recent team only, if they changed teams in the middle of the season I didn't include their old team's stats. The colors represent the expected arrival date of the player, and within each color the players are sorted by age, oldest to youngest. I went with Heisenberg's expected arrival date, and if he had none or more than one listed, I picked what I thought was most likely. Let me know if you have any other feedback.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

[NorthMike]

Researching Berzins inspired me to revisit my recruiting spreadsheet, which I hadn't updated since last June. Here's my latest version, with a few new tweaks, like the record of the player's current team, their NLI/LOI status according to the Heisenberg spreadsheet, and a few others. Stats are for the player's most recent team only, if they changed teams in the middle of the season I didn't include their old team's stats. The colors represent the expected arrival date of the player, and within each color the players are sorted by age, oldest to youngest. I went with Heisenberg's expected arrival date, and if he had none or more than one listed, I picked what I thought was most likely. Let me know if you have any other feedback.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Ten coming in not counting goalies.
How many will be leaving will be interesting.
Six Seniors, four could come back for a fifth year.
Definitely two moving on.

[amkirby10]

Ten coming in not counting goalies.
How many will be leaving will be interesting.
Six Seniors, four could come back for a fifth year.
Definitely two moving on.

Heisenberg also has Berzins listed as "2023 or 2024", but with three goalies on the roster who are all juniors and with him just barely breaking into the USHL, I thought it was more likely he waits a year.

Calafiore and Remick also dont have NLIs signed, and Weis has only played a single game this year. I wonder if one or more of them won't make it to Orono at all, especially Remick without an NLI signed and unimpressive NAHL stats.

[UncleRay]

either way he has consistently put up good or better numbers on teams that have ranged from average to horrific in quality.

"Average to horrific" - he should do well at Maine then!

[Fishman'81]

Going to be tough Friday night with no game and really sad to see the season coming to an end. Obviously Maine is a huge favorite Wednesday but if Holt, Arnott, and Bruneski are all out it’s not the sure thing it would be if they were healthy. Maine definitely has a shot Saturday but it’s hard to feel great about playing at Matthews.

Maine isn't a "huge" favorite against The Little Sisters of the Poor, but they should get by UVM.

(Or not.)

This is still a work in progress.

[Blackbear96]

I saw Maine picked up a commitment from a forward from the New Mexico Ice Wolves, Sully Scholle. Unsure of year / etc / as I'm truthfully not very good with deciphering whether a recruit is good or not, but figured I'd drop the info in case others wanted to dive in further!