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RPI 2025 Off-Season: HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just noticed that Neutral Zone has rerated the players in the Portal. Wallace had 3.75 both before college and now.

These are the old and new ratings, respectively, for our players who are there:
Felix Caron 3.75 3.75
Max Smolinski 4.00 3.75
Nicholas Strom 3.75 3.75
Sutter Muzzatti 3.75 3.75
Tyler Hotson 4.00 3.75
Will Gilson 3.25 4.00

I wonder about some of these rankings.
 
Ralph Baer said:
I just noticed that Neutral Zone has rerated the players in the Portal. Wallace had 3.75 both before college and now.

These are the old and new ratings, respectively, for our players who are there:
Felix Caron 3.75 3.75
Max Smolinski 4.00 3.75
Nicholas Strom 3.75 3.75
Sutter Muzzatti 3.75 3.75
Tyler Hotson 4.00 3.75
Will Gilson 3.25 4.00

I wonder about some of these rankings.
Click to expand...
Seem a little high too me.

my Ratings fwiw,

Caron 3.50 power play specialist, penalty prone
smolinski 3.50 better offensive D man than defensively
strom 3.25 skating, poor blue line reads
muzzatti 3.50 skating unfortunately always hurt
Hotson 4.0
gilson 3.75 vanished second half of year maybe hurt
 
Last edited:
AspyDad said:
Tyler Wallace out of the portal to RPI. 2 seasons at Niagara 27 goals, 29 Assists. Back to my self imposed retirement. Nice pick up. You won't have AspyDad to kick around anymore. Go Red
Click to expand...
No, you don’t want to fade away. Even Nixon didn’t really mean it. He was running for President a few years later. Don’t wait that long. Besides, this program will need all the backers it can get to dig out of our current hole.
 
DrDemento said:
You do realize that one of the reasons that I married he was for my money. 50+ years together and never had a fight (she may be small but i am deathly afraid of her).
Click to expand...
Having known a couple of those diminutive dynamos myself, one thing quickly becomes obvious. By their first day of kindergarten they probably already figured out they will never reach anything. So, when they really get mad, they haul off and kick shins!!!
 
Seems like a decent time to poke my head in and say hello.

Very happy to see Lang come to Troy. I expect big things from him and while it didn't take me long to warm to Appert, this is the first hiring in my living memory that I feel very good about from the beginning. I was pretty young when Fridgen was chosen to replace Buddy Powers (the first coach I actually remember seeing), was initially bummed that Andy Murray turned us down and that we ended up with our second choice, and I will go to my grave upset about the way Appert's replacement was chosen (and I don't need to elaborate here). I tried to give the administration the benefit of the doubt that Smith gave them the blueprint for making things work quickly, but even in the COVID season it never really felt like the team was taking broad steps beyond mediocrity. I used to write about inflection points and that was not a good one. (The administration quickly served up two more bad ones on top of that in 2020 and 2021.)

I penned a lengthy writeup on possible candidates the way I did at WaP in 2017 intending to share it with a few friends, but I shelved it after seeing the excellent work that Stephen and Chris did at their blog that covered plenty of bases even if our lists didn't perfectly align (I'd say about 90% the same, as one would expect). I enjoyed doing it and it really engaged me with the program in a very nostalgic fashion. Ultimately, when the three finalists were revealed, I felt really good. Lang was the obvious choice, but I didn't feel like I did in 2006 or 2017 in that there would be any serious let-down in alternative options.

You probably will continue to not see a whole lot of me. I'm now in my early 40s with three young kids, so I don't have a whole lot of time to spend on personal pursuits. I've mentioned this to Stephen before but not to a wider audience: the college hockey world has pretty much passed me by. Having kids and COVID happening basically at the same time, in combination with my public disassociation with the previous administration just before all of that, combined with the contemporaneous evolution of NIL and the transfer portal has basically left me considerably less valuable as a resource (not that people don't still occasionally reach out to me with questions that I honestly can't answer). I used to know who every player on the team was, what class they were in, and who was on the way - now I'm lucky if I know who the better players currently on the team are and couldn't tell you for a variety of reasons if they'll be back next year.

There's still pride there, though. The night my son was born, RPI beat Harvard in double OT (John Beaton) to come within a win of going to Lake Placid, and I spent the next 12 hours in a hospital room doing the mental gymnastics of how I was going to juggle having a week-old child and going to Lake Placid - because I've never been able to imagine not being there when we finally go. The loss the next afternoon was difficult to put a finger on in terms of how I felt. It was a great relief not having to make the case to my wife, but it's still something that I've been waiting for - for me personally, it has now been 30 years since the last time I was in person to see the Engineers in the last weekend of the ECAC tournament.

Lang and the adminstration, I think, are going to need to make some structural changes in order to keep the program relevant in the near-term, but I am more optimistic now than I have been in over a decade, and hopefully we one day look back at this particular inflection point with great memories.
 
realet said:
There's still pride there, though. The night my son was born, RPI beat Harvard in double OT (John Beaton) to come within a win of going to Lake Placid, and I spent the next 12 hours in a hospital room doing the mental gymnastics of how I was going to juggle having a week-old child and going to Lake Placid - because I've never been able to imagine not being there when we finally go. The loss the next afternoon was difficult to put a finger on in terms of how I felt. It was a great relief not having to make the case to my wife, but it's still something that I've been waiting for - for me personally, it has now been 30 years since the last time I was in person to see the Engineers in the last weekend of the ECAC tournament.
Click to expand...
We will now hear from DrD about RPI vs Clarkson and his first wife going into labor. :D

Great post, Tom. I also have little idea as to what class most are in, what numbers they wear, and what most look like.
 
realet said:
Seems like a decent time to poke my head in and say hello.

Very happy to see Lang come to Troy. I expect big things from him and while it didn't take me long to warm to Appert, this is the first hiring in my living memory that I feel very good about from the beginning. I was pretty young when Fridgen was chosen to replace Buddy Powers (the first coach I actually remember seeing), was initially bummed that Andy Murray turned us down and that we ended up with our second choice, and I will go to my grave upset about the way Appert's replacement was chosen (and I don't need to elaborate here). I tried to give the administration the benefit of the doubt that Smith gave them the blueprint for making things work quickly, but even in the COVID season it never really felt like the team was taking broad steps beyond mediocrity. I used to write about inflection points and that was not a good one. (The administration quickly served up two more bad ones on top of that in 2020 and 2021.)
Click to expand...

Great post. I was genuinely upset when you shut WaP down but I understood. Honestly it was hard to fathom the amount of time and effort you put into it, especially considering the headwinds of administrative (lack of) support. I have heard from enough people in the alumni community with genuine positivity toward the new administration and what it will mean for the hockey programs that I am hopeful now too. So thank you for your efforts all those years and I sincerely wish that good things to come will wash away the bitter taste of the recent past.
 
realet said:
Seems like a decent time to poke my head in and say hello.

Very happy to see Lang come to Troy. I expect big things from him and while it didn't take me long to warm to Appert, this is the first hiring in my living memory that I feel very good about from the beginning. I was pretty young when Fridgen was chosen to replace Buddy Powers (the first coach I actually remember seeing), was initially bummed that Andy Murray turned us down and that we ended up with our second choice, and I will go to my grave upset about the way Appert's replacement was chosen (and I don't need to elaborate here). I tried to give the administration the benefit of the doubt that Smith gave them the blueprint for making things work quickly, but even in the COVID season it never really felt like the team was taking broad steps beyond mediocrity. I used to write about inflection points and that was not a good one. (The administration quickly served up two more bad ones on top of that in 2020 and 2021.)

I penned a lengthy writeup on possible candidates the way I did at WaP in 2017 intending to share it with a few friends, but I shelved it after seeing the excellent work that Stephen and Chris did at their blog that covered plenty of bases even if our lists didn't perfectly align (I'd say about 90% the same, as one would expect). I enjoyed doing it and it really engaged me with the program in a very nostalgic fashion. Ultimately, when the three finalists were revealed, I felt really good. Lang was the obvious choice, but I didn't feel like I did in 2006 or 2017 in that there would be any serious let-down in alternative options.

You probably will continue to not see a whole lot of me. I'm now in my early 40s with three young kids, so I don't have a whole lot of time to spend on personal pursuits. I've mentioned this to Stephen before but not to a wider audience: the college hockey world has pretty much passed me by. Having kids and COVID happening basically at the same time, in combination with my public disassociation with the previous administration just before all of that, combined with the contemporaneous evolution of NIL and the transfer portal has basically left me considerably less valuable as a resource (not that people don't still occasionally reach out to me with questions that I honestly can't answer). I used to know who every player on the team was, what class they were in, and who was on the way - now I'm lucky if I know who the better players currently on the team are and couldn't tell you for a variety of reasons if they'll be back next year.

There's still pride there, though. The night my son was born, RPI beat Harvard in double OT (John Beaton) to come within a win of going to Lake Placid, and I spent the next 12 hours in a hospital room doing the mental gymnastics of how I was going to juggle having a week-old child and going to Lake Placid - because I've never been able to imagine not being there when we finally go. The loss the next afternoon was difficult to put a finger on in terms of how I felt. It was a great relief not having to make the case to my wife, but it's still something that I've been waiting for - for me personally, it has now been 30 years since the last time I was in person to see the Engineers in the last weekend of the ECAC tournament.

Lang and the adminstration, I think, are going to need to make some structural changes in order to keep the program relevant in the near-term, but I am more optimistic now than I have been in over a decade, and hopefully we one day look back at this particular inflection point with great memories.
Click to expand...
Great post. Disagree re: your value in this forum.

100% agree on structural changes. Different environment in 2025. LGR!
 
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