Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

[gfmorris]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

Hey, in the interim, I fully welcome Vandy, UTK, and MTSU fielding varsity hockey teams. We can get our little four-team SCHA and raise hell to get an auto-bid. Seven D-I conferences? Yes, please.

Another recruit: Craig Pierce, 5'11"-190#, playing with the Rochester Starts (Jr. A) of the Empire Junior Hockey League. This season, 31GP 9-11--20 with 21 PIM. Craig is from Atlanta. Heisenberg erroneously lists Rochester as an NAHL team, and I'll shoot him a note about that. This now makes five commitments for 2011-12.

Would y'all be interested in reading interviews with these young men prior to their enrollment at UAH? I'm willing to work to get in touch, but I also have to negotiate the tiptoe of 1) making sure that UAHHockey.com isn't considered official in any way, shape, or form and 2) making sure that any contact I have with these guys isn't an NCAA violation, since I am a booster. Please note that UAH has not and will never comment on recruits until they have enrolled in classes.

GFM

[tnlong]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...28/2079/SPORTS

Nashville to make Frozen Four bid
Preds executive was successful luring college event to Tampa

By Josh Cooper • THE TENNESSEAN • January 18, 2011
Reach Josh Cooper at 615-259-8917 or jcooper2@tennessean.com.

The two NCAA hockey games at Bridgestone Arena last weekend were the first in the building's history. The hope is that they won't be the last.

Nashville Sports Council in conjunction with Bridgestone Arena and the Predators hope to bring college hockey's signature event, the Frozen Four, to Nashville.

Predators President and Chief Operating Officer Sean Henry said Nashville plans to bid for the 2015 or 2016 event if the city meets all the NCAA criteria to host.

"I can't imagine what Broadway would be like if we were fortunate enough to get it," he said.

Henry was one of the architects behind Tampa's successful bid for the 2012 Frozen Four, which will be the first played in a southern city.

The NCAA will accept bids for the 2015 and 2016 Frozen Fours beginning in November, and a decision on the host cities for those years will be made in spring 2012.

Sports Council President Scott Ramsey said Nashville would appear to be well positioned to make a play for the Frozen Four, especially with Music City Center, the new convention facility behind the arena, scheduled to open in 2013.

"I think we have the right elements at least on the surface to be a great host for that event," Ramsey said. "We're just waiting on getting the documents and then sitting down to see if we meet all the requirements."

Over the weekend, Alabama-Huntsville and Merrimack College played two games at Bridgestone Arena. Attendance was announced as 1,976 on Friday and 1,785 on Saturday.

While those numbers fall far short of the arena's hockey capacity of 17,113. Henry said he believes they show the Frozen Four would be a success in Nashville.

"You look at our attendance the last couple of days for college hockey. Is that a good indicator or a bad indicator?" he said. "I think it's a tremendous indicator."

Henry bases his viewpoint on experience. When he worked for the Tampa Bay Lightning, he helped introduce that area to college hockey, and he estimated attendance at St. Pete Times Forum was much less than it was for the Nashville games.(2 of 2)

"We approached it the same way we did this. The difference is we had a couple thousand people here for the game. In Tampa we had, I'd hate to embarrass myself, 500 or 600 people the first game," Henry said. "I think it's a great sign, actually."

The Frozen Four format is similar to basketball's Final Four: two semifinal games on one day, followed by a championship game about 48 hours later.

Since 2005, the Frozen Four has been played in Columbus, Ohio, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Detroit. From 2005-09, average attendance was 18,179.

Attendance last year at Detroit's Ford Field was 34,954 for the semifinals and a record 37,592 for the final.

This year's Frozen Four will be played in St. Paul, Minn. Pittsburgh will host in 2013, followed by Philadelphia in 2014.

In bidding for the 2012 event, Tampa partnered with UAH, which has an established NCAA hockey program. UAH would be the likeliest partner for Nashville, but the city could explore other host-school options.

Vanderbilt and Tennessee would not be among them, however, as they currently field only club-level teams in hockey.

[gfmorris]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

How many freshman did 2003 have? If it's 9, just missing double-digits, but higher than normal, then it would seem we're the epitome of the 4-year cycle.

It was nine, and all of them finished all four years. Here's the progression, starting with 1998: 5, 12, 6, 6, 6, 9, 6, 6, 7, 12, 4, 6, 11

As you can see, the youth of the 11-12 team will be exacerbated by this trend being followed up by a small class in 2008. In looking at Heisenberg's 2008 recruiting list, he has six guys: MacLean [transferred to Niagara], Vassos for 2009 [came to campus and left before practice started], Campbell, Allan for 2009 [he ended up coming in 2010; he was committed to come to UAH for 30 months before coming to class, which has to be a record], Easton, and Durnie for 2009 [ended up coming in 2008].

Since we're throwing numbers around, let's look at balance over the years. Underclassmen are FR/SO, upperclassmen are JR/SR.

1999-2000: 17 under / 8 over
2000-2001: 18 / 7
2001-2002: 11 / 14
2002-2003: 11 / 16
2003-2004: 16 / 9
2004-2005: 15 / 12
2005-2006: 12 / 14
2006-2007: 13 / 13
2007-2008: 19 / 8
2008-2009: 15 / 12
2009-2010: 10 / 15
2010-2011: 16 / 8

We can all see the cycle, and it's important to note that the best years in the program correlate with the run up of upperclassmen: 2001-2003 was the peak of Ross's D-I era, and it's a shame that those teams didn't make the NCAAs; 2006-07 is the first NCAA tournament appearance; 2009-10 was the second appearance.

How do you fix the four-year cycle? It's hard to do it. One way is to try to bring in 10 players a year and let attrition run its course, but I think that's a terribly cynical way to do it. Also, that's expensive. The only other way to do it is to try to redshirt players. That would still require bringing in 12 players for the next two seasons to get overall roster size up for a while, and I don't expect that to happen for a variety of reasons.

A few posts back, chargersupporter noted that UAH needs to bring in a lot of players for next year to get back to a 26-man roster, which is the traditional average. If you presume that everyone comes back and is eligible, you'll have 17 returnees and will need nine players. [Again, Conrad has left school.] The big classes at UAH do have some churn to them, and since 1998, one of every four Chargers doesn't play four years of eligibility ... BUT. 21 of 85 players have left early, and nine of those are in two classes: 1998 [transitional] and 2007. The particulars of 2007 are listed above, and I think that it's safe to say that it's an anomaly

In looking at the numbers for next year, it's also worth looking at when those players leave. Of the 21 Chargers to leave without completing four years, only six did so after one season: D Scott Campbell [6GP 1-0--1] in 2000, F Blake Thompson [2GP 0-0--0] in 2001, G Paul Gibson [0GP] in 2004, D Christian Beaudry [0GP] in 2005, Brady Cook [18GP 0-1--1] in 2007, and Matti Järvinen [30GP, 5-13--18] in 2009. Those leaving after two seasons are Denny Reagan [11GP, 0-2--2], Jordan Erickson [11GP, 1-5-1, 4.61GAA, .854SV%], Kyle Goodchild [20GP, 1-5--6], Mike Ward [36GP, 0-5--5], and Clark Maclean [13GP, 1-1--2].

Now, it's entirely possible that we'll see a statistical blip this offseason and more players will leave than normal. Let's say that the stats hold true, and that four of the 18 players who started the season [counting Conrad in this number, and knowing that he's left] won't be here next year. That means that you have to bring in 12 guys. UAH can do that. UAH has four commitments already, and that is pretty early for us. UAH had five recruits by end of January in 2010 [Allan, Way, BGeoffrion, Groh, Roy], but four of those were holdovers from the previous year [Roy was the new commitment]. In 2009, only SGeoffrion had committed by end of January. In 2008, only Durnie was committed by January. In 2007, UAH had four: Fairbanks, Talbot, Bruni, MacNicol [who came in January and played in the second half]. Given that the season ends before March begins, I think the coaching staff will know who plans on returning before the prime recruiting commitment months for UAH hit: April through July.

I won't speculate about anyone planning to leave. I hope that they all stay. This year has been incredibly hard to be sure, but the Chargers will come back in 2011-12 with a chance to be a lot better, with a full offseason of the coaches working together, a full offseason of the freshmen understanding what commitment they need to make in the offseason to be ready, etc.

Charge on.

GFM

[UAHStatman]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

UAH has had double-digit freshman classes three times: 1999, 2007 [this year's seniors], and 2011. UAH skews underclassman-heavy: 7.67 FR, 6.75 SO, 6.08JR, 5.25SR. As chargersupporter noted, next year will be quite notable for that reason, which is to be expected with the 2007 class being as big as it was, even though 50% of that class did not spend four years in Huntsville. [Coburn and Talbot graduated on time and played professionally, albeit at different levels; Brady Cook left after one year; Kyle Goodchild and Mike Ward left after two; Wyatt Russell left to transfer to film school.]

How many freshman did 2003 have? If it's 9, just missing double-digits, but higher than normal, then it would seem we're the epitome of the 4-year cycle.

[gfmorris]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

I'll bet it's relatively high among the "elites" due to NHL departures after a couple of years... and we know Burkie would churn his roster.

I'll be watching for the results of your study...

Are you trying to imply that Dave Burkholder runs goalies ragged at Niagara? I don't know why you'd ever say such a thing, Doug.

I did run through things. This season's roster was the smallest starting roster in modern UAH D-I history at 24 players. UAH usually averages 26 playes, spread as 14 F, 9 D, and 3 G. This year they were 13-8-3 coming into the season, thanks to Campbell's eligibility problem. Trevor Conrad leaving school a few weeks back makes it a bit thinner.

UAH has had double-digit freshman classes three times: 1999, 2007 [this year's seniors], and 2011. UAH skews underclassman-heavy: 7.67 FR, 6.75 SO, 6.08JR, 5.25SR. As chargersupporter noted, next year will be quite notable for that reason, which is to be expected with the 2007 class being as big as it was, even though 50% of that class did not spend four years in Huntsville. [Coburn and Talbot graduated on time and played professionally, albeit at different levels; Brady Cook left after one year; Kyle Goodchild and Mike Ward left after two; Wyatt Russell left to transfer to film school.]

If you think about it, that those three years would be big freshman booms isn't surprising. 1999 was the first year that it was obvious UAH would be a D-I team, with talent to match that [Bresciani, Butler, Byrne, Charlebois, Fletcher, Funk, Hawes, Leasa, Overton, Zirnis]. 2007 was Danton's first freshman class, and here are the commitment dates per Heisenberg: Cook 7/12, Goodchild 7/12, Russell 7/12, Ward 6/12, Koudys 6/12, Coburn 5/15, Baxter 2/21, Bruni 11/11/06, Talbot 8/21/06, Fairbanks 5/21/06. [Note: Burkholder and Ruffini are not listed on Heisenberg's 2007 recruit site.] I didn't pay attention to this previously, because I'd always thought that the 2007 class was really a transition from Ross to Cole, but that's not true. Bruni and Baxter are the two guys who'd committed to be a part of the transition. Fairbanks would likely have come to Huntsville regardless, as he's a legacy Charger. Talbot was supposed to be a part of the 2006-7 team, but there were some bumps with eligibility. 2011 is as big as it is because of the attrition of that 2007 class.

I've got the data together, but I don't have all of my conclusions drawn just yet. [I was noting where they played juniors, too, and I'm not done getting all that data.]

GFM

[Douglas]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

...I would be surprised to see 26 on the roster. Haven't seen that in a while. I am now interested in doing a study of roster churn in the modern D-I era.GFM

I'll bet it's relatively high among the "elites" due to NHL departures after a couple of years... and we know Burkie would churn his roster.

I'll be watching for the results of your study...

[gfmorris]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

I can remember when we first saw the freshman line of Ross, Bushey, & Rowe. Everyone was very skeptical, especially about Jared coming straight out of high school whether he could "cut it". Well, that was answered real fast as that line "clicked" right off the bat and just a few games into the season they looked more like a seasoned sophomore or early junior line. They contributed right away and moved up the line chart quite fast. I'd love to see that happen again with our new recruits. Shucks, I'd love to see that now with a line that truly gels and gets productive. I think that would inspire other lines to step-up. We'll see...

I'm still mad that DRoss took Rowe off of that line. Keith had the ability to hang in down low in the slot and take the abuse, letting Jared slash and Bushey work in the corners. It frustrates me even more that it took a while to get Zirnis in there on the LW. Anyway.

I would be surprised to see 26 on the roster. Haven't seen that in a while. I am now interested in doing a study of roster churn in the modern D-I era.

GFM

[Douglas]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

Good to see the list of recruits growing. As was posted earlier, team is going to need eight or so to get to a roster of 26, assuming everybody comes back. Gonna be a very young team next year - two seniors and four juniors.

It gets tough when you get into that kind of a cycle as every four years you graduate half the team and it takes a couple of years to reload. The ideal situation, of course, is to have an even spread amonst all classes... easier said than done I know... especially when it gets out of balance like it is now. On the plus side, I like the production numbers of the recruits. We desperately need some production to help turn around all of those one-goal losses. The next big hurdle for those recruits making-the-jump to the next level (Juniors to DI) is to bring their game up with them. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen... we can only hope.

I can remember when we first saw the freshman line of Ross, Bushey, & Rowe. Everyone was very skeptical, especially about Jared coming straight out of high school whether he could "cut it". Well, that was answered real fast as that line "clicked" right off the bat and just a few games into the season they looked more like a seasoned sophomore or early junior line. They contributed right away and moved up the line chart quite fast. I'd love to see that happen again with our new recruits. Shucks, I'd love to see that now with a line that truly gels and gets productive. I think that would inspire other lines to step-up. We'll see...

[Back check]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

Andrew Creppin from Gloucester in the CHL has committed per Chris Heisenberg. 6'1" 190# center from Ottawa.

2010-11 (in progress): 56GP, 43-60--103, 64PIM
2009-10: 59GP, 31-43--74 40PIM
2008-09: 26-26-53 35PIM

Seeing good solid numbers on incoming recruits. Warde and Morgan are doing their jobs. Keep the faith, folks. This year's team is very young, but the freshmen who're playing big roles this year will have a full year of experience when they start playing next fall. [It's weird to be talking about the end of the season so soon, but such it the life of a current-day D-I independent.]

GFM

Good to see the list of recruits growing. As was posted earlier, team is going to need eight or so to get to a roster of 26, assuming everybody comes back. Gonna be a very young team next year - two seniors and four juniors.

[Douglas]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

I told you guys I'd keep you updated, and Brock Higgs, the player who was horribly injured during your series with RPI, will be in our lineup this weekend: http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2...mode=fullstory

I want to thank you guys once again for your quick actions in parallel with our trainer and pre-med player to make sure Mr. Higgs stayed alive.

Very pleased to see him back in the lineup. It was scary as I was on the bench when it happened and saw all the blood. Ugh!!!
Great news!!! We wish him all the best.

[gfmorris]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

Andrew Creppin from Gloucester in the CHL has committed per Chris Heisenberg. 6'1" 190# center from Ottawa.

2010-11 (in progress): 56GP, 43-60--103, 64PIM
2009-10: 59GP, 31-43--74 40PIM
2008-09: 26-26-53 35PIM

Seeing good solid numbers on incoming recruits. Warde and Morgan are doing their jobs. Keep the faith, folks. This year's team is very young, but the freshmen who're playing big roles this year will have a full year of experience when they start playing next fall. [It's weird to be talking about the end of the season so soon, but such it the life of a current-day D-I independent.]

GFM

[gfmorris]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

This is great news, thanks!

Agreed. I have a huge smile on my face.

GFM

[fangers]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

I told you guys I'd keep you updated, and Brock Higgs, the player who was horribly injured during your series with RPI, will be in our lineup this weekend: http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2...mode=fullstory

I want to thank you guys once again for your quick actions in parallel with our trainer and pre-med player to make sure Mr. Higgs stayed alive.

This is great news, thanks!

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

I told you guys I'd keep you updated, and Brock Higgs, the player who was horribly injured during your series with RPI, will be in our lineup this weekend: http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2...mode=fullstory

I want to thank you guys once again for your quick actions in parallel with our trainer and pre-med player to make sure Mr. Higgs stayed alive.

[jyoung]

Re: Declaring Our Independence: UAH 2010-11, Part the First

Merrimack fan here. I listened Friday niight, and it sounded like Saunders was playing out of his mind. MC goalie Cannata had an off nite. Saturday, well the MC offense got it cranked up. This is probably the best team that Merrimack has ever had, much stronger than you might have seen only 2 or 3 years ago.
Best of luck to the Chargers the rest of the way.

I expected to lose both nights to that Merrimack team. Yes, I know you're putting a team on the ice that has a legitimate shot at playing in the post seasons and making some very established programs wince if they draw you. Kudos to your team. The problem I have is that we have enough talent to make a game of it with just about anyone. Not win necessarily, but make a game of it. We should be able to steal an occasional marquee win, and against weaker opponents we should be on par. We've not been doing that, and we really should be. There's enough here to do it with and on a good night you see glimpses of it. The problem is that it's never seemed to come together to do that.

I really expected something akin to 5-3 or so for the scores, and it bothers me that we were so dismal that we couldn't put any pressure on your goalie on Saturday. The off-night I'll grant you, since we're not normally explosive enough to get 4 goals.