Friar Hockey 21-22 - Reach for the top

[Jon]

Hockey East Tourney winner or bust now....

The way this season is going, I could see them blowing out UVM, being blown out and having the season end that way or five OT's - and then who knows what happens?

[Jon]

PC moves on. They had the game under control until the late power play goal by UVM and the ensuing chaos.
I'm still not sure why the final clear wasn't an icing. I don't think UVM was going to score with less than a second remaining, but weirder things have happened.
On to UMASS.

[The Freds]

Looking forward to seeing the Friars at the Garden soon.

[theprofromdover]

Looking forward to seeing the Friars at the Garden soon.

Does this mean you'll actually go to a game?

[Jon]

Looking forward to seeing the Friars at the Garden soon.

Roboshark willing

[73PCFriar]

Well that's it for another season. Friars did a good job of throwing shots at Murray, problem is they were at Murray with not much effort needed to make save. Still they did have their chances. Other problem is they got smoked by two of the best UMASS players to fall behind 3-0. Friars get one back with Duran scoring his 3rd goal in 2 games in Amherst. Final was 4-2 with UMASS getting goal with Stauber pulled and PC getting a goal with Stauber pulled in the closing minutes.

Tough to say a 22 win season was a disappointment but their inability to score against the better teams they played was a killer in their losses. PP also lost some of it's lustre lately, Last night they had back to back PPs and couldn't muster anything.

So now we see who stays and who decides to leave for the non-seniors (and maybe the staff?)

[uncle_cliff]

Well that's it for another season. Friars did a good job of throwing shots at Murray, problem is they were at Murray with not much effort needed to make save. Still they did have their chances. Other problem is they got smoked by two of the best UMASS players to fall behind 3-0. Friars get one back with Duran scoring his 3rd goal in 2 games in Amherst. Final was 4-2 with UMASS getting goal with Stauber pulled and PC getting a goal with Stauber pulled in the closing minutes.

Agree with your sentiments, but when you outshoot your opponent by a 3-1 margin and only have 2 goals to show for it, there are multiple problems. PC's shot selection was marginal all season long, and how many times did shots completely miss the net? Stauber also has to take some fault here; while he was solid, he was never spectacular, especially when PC needed it the most, and never really stole a game this season. Their OOC record was decent, but the HE sweeps by BU, Merrimack, and NU killed their NCAA chances.

[steven22]

If PC won their home games against UMass , Merrimack and Northeastern, they would have been #11 in the pairwise as of today. Being swept as mentioned destroyed any chance of going to the NCAAs.

[The Zlax45]

Agree with your sentiments, but when you outshoot your opponent by a 3-1 margin and only have 2 goals to show for it, there are multiple problems. PC's shot selection was marginal all season long, and how many times did shots completely miss the net? Stauber also has to take some fault here; while he was solid, he was never spectacular, especially when PC needed it the most, and never really stole a game this season. Their OOC record was decent, but the HE sweeps by BU, Merrimack, and NU killed their NCAA chances.

The person that needs to be held accountable is behind the bench. He has now gone three straight years without getting a bid to the NCAA Tourney or being in position to make the NCAA's. Is he more worried about promoting himself by coaching USA teams, going to Bruins camp as a guest coach, being on TV doing interviews about his alums over the recruiting aspects of his job to actually improve the product on the ice?

[uncle_cliff]

The person that needs to be held accountable is behind the bench. He has now gone three straight years without getting a bid to the NCAA Tourney or being in position to make the NCAA's. Is he more worried about promoting himself by coaching USA teams, going to Bruins camp as a guest coach, being on TV doing interviews about his alums over the recruiting aspects of his job to actually improve the product on the ice?

Never forget that Leaman helped resurrect a terrible program and made PC into a national champion, and thus he has earned and has been given wide latitude in that respect. However your points on his recent actions are valid, and now with a new AD now on board, perhaps a change in direction is in order.

[NEW Friar]

Just a couple of observations, the Friars were in the Frozen Four finals in 2019 and there was no NCAA frozen four event in 2020 so its actually been only 2 years since they have not made it. In 2021 as I recall the Friars were the next team in after the initial selection process and would have been in had the NCAA given another day to replace a team that had to drop out due to Covid, (as one team did on Tuesday instead of Monday). I am not sure what a new direction means, but below is the "old" direction.

	Prior Coaches Best Years
	Army	Pooley	McShane	Lamoriello		Leaman
Years	6	10	9	15		11
Best Season	51.4%	61.3%	67.1%	76.7%		76.3%
2nd Best Season	45.8%	57.7%	63.9%	72.2%		65.9%
3rd Best Season	35.3%	56.9%	61.1%	65.6%		65.0%
Avg after 1st 2yrs	36.2%	50.7%	54.7%	59.8%		65.0%
	Army	Pooley	McShane	Lamoriello		Leaman
Average Win %	38.1%	50.9%	49.7%	57.8%		60.4%T

I too was disappointed this year as they had a good team, and as mentioned, could have qualified with another couple of wins. The sweep by Merrimack was facilitated by the refs calling an offside after Nick Poisson tied the game in the last couple of minutes and had all the Friars had all the momentum at that point. The video review took a long time and the offsides was not evident on the video replay. I thought the good goal call on the ice should have been upheld. The BU second game had a similar situation when Parker Ford was given a 5 minute major after review despite the fact that the ref right next to the play had not made a call at all. The replay there showed that Ford had stopped to avoid pushing the BU player into the boards. I personally thought it was embellishment. Then BU scored a couple of times to take a lead. Sometimes there is puck luck, sometimes there is ref luck.

Another issue was giving up a goal way too many times on the first or second shot. Stauber is a good goalie, but wish there was a way to have the second stringer start the game until the other team takes a couple of shots. The team had to come from behind to win way too many times. Their come from behind record was good but doing it so often was asking too much.

[Pigui841]

You can spin it however you like, but with a 16-12-6 record in ‘19-20, they would have missed the tourney had there been one. Record the past 3 years has been quite disappointing considering Nate’s ability to recruit more high end talent with each passing year, and let’s not overstate the success of this year’s team based on a 22 win season. 11 wins against sub .500 teams and 9 of those against teams near the bottom of the pairwise. Perhaps scheduling tougher OOC completion would serve them better in the long run.
Scoring was more of a problem this season than goaltending IMO…gave up 3rd fewest goals in HE and were near bottom in goals scored.

[altazo]

I don’t know, scheduling NC games vs. Duluth, Denver, Minnesota State, and even Wisconsin seems pretty ambitious and legit.

Can’t say the same about the Atlantic Hockey matchups, but can’t fault anybody for scheduling Army, and AIC seems to be in the tournament fairly often now.

[NEW Friar]

I think spinning isn't the goal, the objective was to show overall quality of the actual results. I checked the math on my stats and made a slight change to Nate's record in terms the win % after the first two years, (thinking that every coach needs some time to get their own players on board before the results are just on them). I added information about NCAA appearances and results. I don't know whether they would have gotten in if there was a tournament in 2020, or whether all the games that would have been played prior to the beginning of the event were played for that matter. I does seem odd to conclude as a fact not making something that didn't happen as a criticism. But however you want to look at this, the stats show that Nate is the most successful hockey coach Providence has ever had.

	Prior Coaches Best Years
	Army	Pooley	McShane	Lamoriello		Leaman
Years	6	10	9	15		11
Best Season	51.4%	61.3%	67.1%	76.7%		76.3%
2nd Best Season	45.8%	57.7%	63.9%	72.2%		65.9%
3rd Best Season	35.3%	56.9%	61.1%	65.6%		65.0%
Avg after 1st 2yrs	36.1%	50.7%	54.7%	59.2%		63.2%
Made NCAA's	0	2	2	3		6
Made NCAA Finals	0	0	0	1		2
Won NCAA Finals	0	0	0	0		1
	Army	Pooley	McShane	Lamoriello		Leaman
Average Win %	38.1%	50.9%	49.7%	57.8%		60.4%

[uncle_cliff]

But however you want to look at this, the stats show that Nate is the most successful hockey coach Providence has ever had

Agreed. Leaman has brought the program to new heights during his tenure - with two frozen four appearances and one championship - but along with that comes higher expectations as a result. Yes, they may have had bad puck/ref luck this year, and the NCAA certainly screwed them last year by giving the final playoff spot to Notre Dame (even though PC had a better record and PW ranking) and then not replacing ND with PC during the tournament within a reasonable timeframe due to Covid.

However it's no coincidence IMHO in the last two/three consecutive years that PC has missed the NCAA tournament, Leaman also coached other teams and thus his focus was not 100% on advancing PC's program. Nate has been personally successful during that time, and PC less so as a team.

** Added**

And so it continues: Nate Leaman, Theresa Feaster Return To 2022 U.S. National Junior Team Staff - Providence College Athletics (friars.com)