Well Doc, I think we can still win under that system. A few years back some of the big boys tried to push through a change that would have reduced the eligibility threshold. Now you only lose time if you play juniors past your 21st birthday (and if IIRC you can even game that a little if they are enrolled in a CC so the player becomes a transfer using a redshirt year). They wanted to lower it. Watching Minnesota - Minnesota State last night the reason was clear - they don't want to see their prize 18 and 19 year old draft picks beaten by a well-coached team of older men. Not that we will be going back to the finals any time soon, but I happen to think that a guy like Coach Smith, whose teams play a pretty well structured game, is the kind that can take a group of mature, reasonably skilled players and make them into a solid program.
We need to find a combination of late bloomers (see Ture Linden, who played 2 1/2 years for the Kent School and scored a whopping 3 goals) and solid players that come in just below the big guys' radar. Then we can even use the transfer portal to our advantage to take some skilled players that just didn't mesh as the hot shot kids at their prior schools (see Zieky, Chase and Walsh, TJ) but may blossom in a new environment. To add a non-RPI example, one of the best performers for Mankato last night was a kid named Silye, who went scoreless in 17 games for Clarkson last season. Sure we may lose some of the graduating juniors I wrote about earlier to the big guys, but if we build a winning program there will be less incentive for that to happen. It would also help if we don't have a repeat of a once in a century pandemic combined with a, hopefully, once in a millennium administration.
We need to find a combination of late bloomers (see Ture Linden, who played 2 1/2 years for the Kent School and scored a whopping 3 goals) and solid players that come in just below the big guys' radar. Then we can even use the transfer portal to our advantage to take some skilled players that just didn't mesh as the hot shot kids at their prior schools (see Zieky, Chase and Walsh, TJ) but may blossom in a new environment. To add a non-RPI example, one of the best performers for Mankato last night was a kid named Silye, who went scoreless in 17 games for Clarkson last season. Sure we may lose some of the graduating juniors I wrote about earlier to the big guys, but if we build a winning program there will be less incentive for that to happen. It would also help if we don't have a repeat of a once in a century pandemic combined with a, hopefully, once in a millennium administration.
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