Northeastern 2022-23: Unfinished Business - Great Expectations

[Turk2112]

This has top be the most disappointing Husky season in its history. With the top 5 preseason ranking to not even make it to league semi's is a huge swing and miss. To have the best goalie in the country the last 2 seasons and not do more than they did is a swing and miss. This was the deepest D core they have ever had, I loved those 3 freshman D, Struble in an NHL D man and Bueclher and Spott was good senior players. This team should have been better with Levi and those 6 D. Scoring was a huge problem, what the hell happened to J Hughes? He was a non factor all year, didn't even notice him on the ice. Colangelo, I think its time to accept he is not a top tier player. I like Fontaine, he has a knack for the big moment. Lund will be a force, Williams is a good player. I liked the freshman, the issue layed with the senior class. Other than McD, no seniors steppe dup. DeMelis, R Hughes, nothing from them. I like DeMelis cause he can do other things, but we needed one of them to be like Schule was his senior year. Step up and get is double didget goals. I would consider Demilis on a 5th year, not R Hughes. One thing that has me concerned, I heard from a college hockey coach that the rumor on the street is that there are a lot of unhappy players on this team and the feeling is that the portal will be filled with NU players. He said he has no idea if this is true, just what they are hearing. That would be a big problem if true. I saw Gaudette is gone, that doesn't hurt. I'm hoping they do not lose any freshman.

[Split-N]

Devon Levi named Hockey East Player of the Year. Ratdogs Lane Hutson and Jay Pandolfo named ROY and COY, respectively.

Devon Levi Named Hockey East Player of the Year - Hockey East Association (hockeyeastonline.com)

Jayden Struble signs with Montreal and likely will get assigned to Laval; Aiden McDonough signs with Vancouver and could get a shot with the big club before season's end.

[boblav1]

I'd wondered about St.Louis, too. I think if he were returning, he wouldn't be listed as uncommitted.

(1) Dubuque Fighting Saints on Twitter: "⚠️ COMMITMENT ALERT ⚠️ Ryan St. Louis has announced his commitment to further his education and hockey career with @BrownU_MHockey. Congrats Ryan! : https://t.co/niHq5XoRXu #HailToTheHalo #MarchWithUs #StarsRise https://t.co/mHNrwG3Vd5" / Twitter

[PullTheGoalie]

Riley Hughes in the Portal

[Split-N]

Riley Hughes in the Portal

Tyler Spott and Cam Gaudette too. Hoping they can hold onto the (relatively few) productive forwards.

[Lemonade]

Hearing Jack Hughes will be jumping on the portal too. Mass exodus at NU. It’s not a great system is you are an offensive player would be my guess as why players are leaving.

[OnePack]

Plus Lund or McDonald. Looks like the program is getting obliterated

edit to comment on levi leaving: happy for him, sad for the program. Everyone has expressed their disappointment yet it’s still an understatement. To amount to nothing with the best goaltender is really a crime. Between lack of success and the outflow of talent there is something wrong. I know a lot of people on this forum talk about their teams this way. It’s easy to be harsh. I hate to do it. But i think we are just beginning to see the cracks.

Plus to throw in some other questions:

why recruit BUs sloppy seconds?

why bother with deroche last year when you run the risk of disenfranchising your fans for a miserable at best player?

Where was adaptation in the power play- I don’t think bottom third of ncaa is where this team should be on paper and without mcdonoughs one-timer we may have been last. The % doesn’t tell you how bad it looked.

[PullTheGoalie]

The losses of McDonough, Struble, Levi, Bucheler, Novak, Walsh, Demelis, Mella, Riley Hughes and Spott were expected. The decisions to leave by Cam Gaudette and James Davenport are not surprising. Players want to play and will look to go where they can. The reported planned transfer of Jack Hughes is a jaw dropper. Jeff Cox reports that another drafted underclassmen will also enter the portal. That description could be Lund, McDonald, Doyle or Dorrington. Cox also said that almost all the losses would be addition by subtraction. One Pack, I know your BU comment refers to Doyle. I don't think he saw a moment of ice time after the Jan 1 game vs Harvard. I'm guessing he's the other drafted underclassmen looking to move on.

[PullTheGoalie]

Kind of a surprise. Sam Colangelo enters the portal.

[OnePack]

Kind of a surprise. Sam Colangelo enters the portal.

I’m definitely surprised. Not a good harbinger.

I’m not sure how someone in the pipeline filling his shoes is a good thing. Maybe the coaching staff has a game plan, but I think it’s more likely lack of success is breeding lack of success here.

[OnePack]

Officially official on Jack Hughes.

One of the highest touted prospects we have ever had and he leaves after two years not to the pros but to the portal! Players don’t leave if they are happy and these guys obviously aren’t happy. We talked all season about how bad the morale of this squad looked and now we get to see how bad it actually is. I find it highly unlikely the coaching staff coached them both out of the program (would love to hear otherwise). All in we are looking at a very young team next year and some serious rebuilding underway.

as it stands we will have 1 senior and 2 junior forwards with any experience. Maybe we can pick up some transfers of our own, but they’re unlikely to be top 6 type players. 5 incoming freshman I don’t know much about.

On D we are looking at all frosh/soph lines and new goaltending.

[boblav1]

Mark Divver @MarkDivver
Princeton D Pito Walton headed to Northeastern. Expected to attend Toronto development camp this summer. Had offers from AHL teams

[TheRevengeance]

Now I remember why I stopped coming to this place. The doom and gloom from alleged NU "fans" in here is unreal.

Yes, losing two top picks looks bad. The looks are far and away the worst part of it. If the two transfers were anything close to what they were supposed to be when they were 17 they'd still not be back at NU next year - because they'd both have signed with their NHL teams by now instead of sitting at home without contract offers. They managed to post a combined -18 rating on a winning team in front of the best goaltender in the country, when 0 (zero) other regular skaters had a negative differential. They were both on the first unit of the worst power play Northeastern has had in the Madigan-Keefe era. Mitch Brown of EP Rinkside watched and rated every NU player and gave Jack Hughes a 20 grade on a scale of 0-100, the second worst rated player on the team and only eclipsed by his brother Riley, who will be transferring with him to ravage some other program. JD Burke of the same publication wrote a scathing review of Colangelo, saying among other things that he "isn't nearly as productive as anyone would've hoped", called his skating "well below average at the college level," that he "spends most of his game operating as a spectator" and "wanders in and out of prime scoring chances without increasing the quality of each look." Jeff Cox posted on the New England Hockey Journal that Northeastern's transfer losses "can be seen as addition by subtraction." These are all direct postings in public forums. They aren't behind the scenes musings or quotes from a scorned coaching staff. None of them besides arguably Cox have any reason to carry water for NU. Another big school will take these guys as reclamation projects because of their pedigree and potential. I wish them the best of luck. If they had left a year ago and NU had the chance to spend their scholarships elsewhere the team would probably be playing hockey this weekend instead of being two weeks into their summer golf outings. If you want to criticize the staff for not developing them have at it, if you want to blame NU for both of them being outperformed by such highly touted prospects as Matt Choupani and Jack Williams have at it, but my only complaint is that I won't be watching Northeastern this weekend (and that Eli Sebastian has somehow still not been put on NLI.)

[PullTheGoalie]

TR, no argument here with those assessments. I do wonder though, what happened to JHughes? Freshman year, starting as the youngest player in the NCAA, was impressive. Sophomore year was immensely disappointing. I keep waiting for someone to reveal that there was a physical reason for it, any reason for it. I really can't remember another player having first and second years like that. Any insight on what happened?

[Split-N]

I do not have the hockey knowledge (beyond a point), have never met any of the current NU players, and have no insight into the program. So, I'm not in a position to know if the parade to the portal is 1) A repudiation of the team "culture;" 2) The coaching staff cleaning house; or 3) Just what has come to be the normal movement of players since the transfer portal came to be a thing. What I'm keeping an eye on (and knocking on wood about) is any of NU's younger players following suit and any pipeline decommits.