Miami Redhawks

[Dan]

To be perfectly frank, Miami was never a hockey power, and they never had the longstanding base of support to sustain fan interest when an inevitable downturn in fortunes arrived. Miami was pretty much a mediocrity and also-ran in the sport until about 2005. In the mid 2000's, they went on a hell of run for eight or nine years and were without question a top ten program (not top five without a NC), but when that ended, it would certainly seem that a large amount of the fanbase simply hopped off the bandwagon.

They're located in a state with marginal hockey culture and two other D1 programs. Cady is nice, but it's not all that special. We're not talking about Yost or Hobey Baker as a recruiting tool. Academics? Miami is 97th in the current USNWR ranking, so I don't see that as some magic recruiting tool in a sport that has many Ivy league and close to Ivy schools in it. The overall athletic department is a typical football mid-major swimming in debt. Once the shine wore off the hot young coach, it would seem that the program has simply gravitated back to its historical norm. Despite all the crowing about "college hockey's newest dynsaty" and "we're a hockey school," Miami really wasn't. It was simply a school that latched onto a hot young coach and rode that wave for awhile, but when the tide receded there was no real foundation there to maintain long term support.

While you are right about Miami's hockey history to some degree - I'm not sure why that matters. Yes, prior to Rico's arrival they had only occasionally flashed potential (Savage, Adams, Robataille, etc) - things changed and was a top program for most of the first 16 years of Rico's tenure (winning 20 games 12 times and making 10 Tournaments) . That may not have been a blue-blood/old money foundation - but that's a significant foundation. Miami was hardly a flash in the pan, new coach sensation...

Steve Cady arena is special. It has EVERY bell and whistle a player could want. It is a new and elite facility - with a great atmosphere when they're winning. Yost Ice Arena is special because it's Michigan's arena. Put it on most other campuses and it's simply a neat place to watch a game. Similar to what Hobey Baker rink is today - cool, but HARDLY a recruiting tool.

As far as academics go - Miami will never rate highly on those lists due to ranking criteria. Though, when I was in school and they tried to compete they were a top-15/20 public school in America. Since, they focus heavily on undergraduate education - which means few of the masters programs and research opportunities (as well as relatively smaller endowment) that feed those lists. Still, I would think undergraduate emphasis would be pretty important to undergraduate hockey players...

http://www.miamioh.edu/news/top-stories/2014/09/us-news.html

Additionally Miami is in and out of the top-10 (among college hockey schools) business schools (and top-50 overall) and as noted in the article above a top-30 undergrad engineering program.

https://www.collegechoice.net/rankings/top-undergraduate-business-schools/

A lot of Miami's undergrad programs are very highly regarded - but those two stand out in college hockey player terms and I don't have the time to look up every one. Outside of the Ivy schools there isn't much Miami (a Public Ivy) can't offer that any other school in college hockey can offer academically that Miami doesn't.

A lot of the 'better' schools are the giant schools where one could just as easily get lost as excel (especially as an athlete) or the small specialty/liberal arts schools in the Northeast. Miami academics easily compete with those schools regardless of what those schools tell you. Especially when considering academic benefit often comes down to the student themselves...

As for the athletic department itself - your description is not unfounded in general, but it is irrelevant when it comes to hockey. Yes, Miami currently has a bad football team, but it's hardly effected hockey. At the time Rico signed his new deal it made him the highest paid coach on campus. The team plays in a state of the art, new and beautiful arena. The staff is paid well. The team is outfitted and supported by a large budget. Miami hockey is not hindered by its football team. If anyone is it's the bball teams...

All of this misunderstanding of Miami and its hockey program only underscores the need for elite recruiters who aggressively make aware and sell top recruits. Miami may not be the best at anything - but it has EVERYTHING!

The recruiters simply aren't getting the job done. It may be one of the more difficult jobs in the NCHC due to its isolated location and it's under-reported strentgths - but if the work is done correctly it's easy one of the jobs with the biggest payoff.

I'd be hard pressed to understand how a kid would visit Miami and, afterward, even consider one of the other NCHC schools aside from Denver which is extremely similar (current hockey success aside). Anyone who would argue that probably hasn't been to visit Miami - which probably represents Miami's biggest hurdle getting kids to travel to Oxford for a visit. Bergeron and Blashill made that happen. Good recruiters can make that happen again and if they do Miami will be back. Whether that's with Rico still here or not...

It's not a coincidence that Miami began to lose ground to OSU when they lost their elite recruiters and OSU gained a recruiting head coach (and added Miller) or that BG rose to WCHA prominence when they hired one of Miami's old recruiters...

The recruiters at Miami have been the difference. Period. The school is the package. Selling it has been the problem. The last few years have been recruiting malpractice, quite frankly...

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Oh and not that a college hockey player should make their decision based on something like this, but (and there are 100s of articles just like this one on the web)...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thrillist.com/amphtml/travel/nation/colleges-with-the-most-attractive-girls

[Dan]

You said earlier that "Well, Denver's Denver" and I agree. Miami isn't Denver...

You said flatly you can't win in the NCHC without MN kids. Denver has. Western Michigan also has zero Minnesota kids on the roster. Meanwhile, Omaha has seven. CC has five.

You can't win as a Minnesota school (especially a DII Minnesota school) without getting top Minnesota kids. I think that's what you mean. Being in Minnesota is what SCSU and UMD absolutely need to succeed. And you know why they're winning despite being in the complete shadow of UMN - because they had elite and aggressive recruiters who got after it and never game one rip about their supposed place in the college hockey pecking order...

Miami is close to a number of other very fertile recruiting grounds, has pulled kids from MN before and now should have more access than ever being in a conference with MN teams. MN is now a legit secondary benefit to Miami not a hinderance...

If you're a school with elite access to MI, CHI, STL, PIT, Ontario and WNY you're not losing because you are not first at the table in MN. You're losing because you're recruiters aren't good enough at recruiting anywhere...

[Dan]

Re: Miami Redhawks

Miami also won the '15 NCHC Championship with just two Minnesotans - one third pair defenseman and non-dresser. They did so because they still had elite upperclassmen (from the many other recruiting grounds available to them).

Unfortunately their younger classes were bare due to the recruiting/MJ debacle I outlined earlier. Miami slipped when those players moved on and the results weren't the same with the replacements on the next few classes. Recruiting has yet to recover because the recruiters aren't as talented...

It also didn't help that they skated Trevor Hamilton in one game that season, before he left for PSU and scored 55 points from the blueline his last two years.

I don't begrudge the outside opinion, in the one Miami thread to show up on this board in years. But as the one guy who went there and actually follows the team closely when I say it really is that simple...

It's not the school. It's not the arena. It's not the AD. It just turns out that replacing a future NHL HC and a guy who revived a dead in the water BGSU team with your third-string goalie, who had ZERO recruiting experience (but was a nice kid), just isn't going to get it done...

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Find talented recruiters who can sell and Miami will be back. Don't and they will become irrelevant quickly.

And to the MiamiHawkTalk posters who I know are now reading this thread - the idea that Mannino has instantly restocked the cupboard is not one I agree with. It's early so we'll see - but right now they have a pretty mediocre pipeline highlighted by two transfers...

One who did very little at Penn State and another from Holy Cross. Savage has never been a pure scorer. If the decision is to make a change this year or next I'm not to worrried about losing some commitments when the opportunity is there to rebuild the staff for the better...

[SCSU BlackandRed]

Re: Miami Redhawks

Where did Belpedio grow up? Wasn’t born in Minnesota and didn’t play high school hockey there.

[Dan]

Where did Belpedio grow up? Wasn’t born in Minnesota and didn’t play high school hockey there.

You're right. He's from Chicago. Drafted by MN. That was my mistake and I've edited. I had his back story confused with Jarod Palmer - a Minnesota native who played for Miami and was the home-state Wild draft pick story I had in mind...

Point remains, Miami has a lot of inside tracks on top recruiting areas (NCHC further opens MN if anything) and the talent on staff is the big difference. I'm not sure who Talons is a fan of, but SCSU and UMD are poster-children for the impact aggressive recruiters can have...

[SCSU BlackandRed]

Re: Miami Redhawks

Yes, Minnesota is a possibility to recruit but it isn’t going to be a place where you have a real shot getting top players out of the state on a regular basis. You can list all the positive points about Miami you want but the absolute truth is if you grow up playing hockey in Minnesota you want to play for the Gophers then UMD, UND and SCSU. Mankato has also built a very solid program that now dominates the WCHA. Staying home is a big deal to these kids. Sure a few want to get away from it and end up at the Harvard, BC and BUs of the world. Then a few will go to other B1G schools. The appeal of playing at Miami is just so far down the list again taking nothing away from the school. It does sound like a great college experience.

[Dan]

Yes, Minnesota is a possibility to recruit but it isn’t going to be a place where you have a real shot getting top players out of the state on a regular basis. You can list all the positive points about Miami you want but the absolute truth is if you grow up playing hockey in Minnesota you want to play for the Gophers then UMD, UND and SCSU. Mankato has also built a very solid program that now dominates the WCHA. Staying home is a big deal to these kids. Sure a few want to get away from it and end up at the Harvard, BC and BUs of the world. Then a few will go to other B1G schools. The appeal of playing at Miami is just so far down the list again taking nothing away from the school. It does sound like a great college experience.

Kids who grow up with the NCHC will also really want to play in the NCHC. It's new, but just being in the conference is helpful for all the teams in recruiting the entire footprint. If Miami starts winning their shots at MN kids will improve even more...

Jarod Palmer scored 137 points in four years at Miami. Seems like a pretty good coax out of the state for a CCHA team. Those types will occasionally be available and interested to the right RedHawk recruiters. Probably more often as the league ages...

And none of that even matters as the idea that you can't win in the NCHC without MN players is nothing more than MN hubris. Miami is a huge draw as a university in Chicago, St. Louis and Michigan. Ontario, Pittsburgh and Western New York are all less than five hour drives from campus. Miami has just as much access to the BCHL (or CA, TX or non-Canadian foreigners and other non-traditional but growing markets) as anyone. The USHL games are all easy recruiting trips. OH and IN aren't factories, but both are turning out a surprising number of top players in a region Miami used to (and should) monopolize (Jobst at OSU and Pierson at UNH are types that are easy Miami pickings not too long ago)...

Miami doesn't need Minnesota. It needs better recruiters on staff. That's it. Top options to recruit are all around them. If they can supplement those options with a kid out of MN every few years all the better. If not, it's hardly an impact if they're doing their job well in other areas...

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You note yourself that SCSU is the fourth choice for most MN players - yet SCSC is as talented as UMD and well ahead of UMN and UND the last few years. Why is that? It's because they had/have elite recruiters with the proper mindset - recruiters who don't give a **** that those players first choice might be UMN/UND or UW or ND and aggressively pursued, offered and sold them on SCSU anyway...

THAT is what Miami is missing. They're not down because they're not a preconceived favorite in MN or because they're lack access to numerous recruiting hotspots of their own. They have plenty of places to recruit. They're down because they're failing to identify and sell...

They're definitely getting desperate- they stole a few kids from Omaha (including Dashke who's been great and Pekar who didn't make it) and they may well have actively talked this HC kid into transferring, but time will tell if they're actually getting any better under Mannino...

They have no excuses not to turn this around, because once they can get kids on campus for visits it honestly should be like shooting fish in a barrel at that point...

As one UNH poster described Miami to me after making the trip for a game - it's 'basically Disneyland for college kids'...

The campus IS that gorgeous. The facility IS that nice. The two of Oxford IS that fun. The women ARE that beautiful, confident and intelligent. The school IS very good. If you can't recruit to Miami, you can't recruit. It's really that simple...

It may be the mid-sized school in a small town, with the funny name and the MAC sports affiliation - but all you have to do as a recruiter is share what the school is truly about and 90% of your job is done. After that it's fully funded like every other top program...

[SCSU BlackandRed]

Re: Miami Redhawks

You said you can get Minnesota players. I just listed the reasons you won’t be able to on a regular basis. Never said you need Minnesota players to win.

[Dan]

You said you can get Minnesota players. I just listed the reasons you won’t be able to on a regular basis. Never said you need Minnesota players to win.

I never claimed that it was going to be their go-to recruiting ground - just another option to get kids with the right recruiters. The argument that MN players were necessary came from someone else and I lumped arguments.

I'm from NH and a UNH fan as well - I remember all the arguements early on in HE that the Boston kids would never leave Boston. Then UNH became a power, built with rosters that included a number of Boston area players (then they lost their ace recruiter, had a major recruiting issue that cost them a couple classes and the mediocre recruiters who followed haven't recovered - sound familiar)...

Twenty years ago Boston area kids were Boston first, second, third and fourth according to Boston fan bases. The reality was the He conference was dominant and that became the draw. More and more kids started leaving urban MA because they wanted to play in Hockey East first and foremost and there were other options like UNH and Maine. Nowadays it's UML, UM and PC thriving in the HE footprint with plenty of success in BC/BU territory...

Those that were up in the last share one common trait with those that are up now. Aggressive, confident and skilled recruiters who don't care about why kids they're not supposed to be able to get and just got get them anyway.

Literally being in Boston didn't do much for Northeastern for the longest time - the last few years they've been the best program in the city because of their aggressive recruiting approach. It didn't do much for Harvard either, until Donato arrived...

Recruiting is people first. Scholarship money second. Location, facilities, etc far behind...

The NCHC loves to tout itself as the conference in college hockey - if that proves to be the case and if the league distances itself from the rest. NCHC will be a bigger draw than you give credit. And there are only three MN schools in the league if you count UND (who recruits all over)...

[Eddie Schorr]

...

As one UNH poster described Miami to me after making the trip for a game - it's 'basically Disneyland for college kids'...

The campus IS that gorgeous. The facility IS that nice. The two of Oxford IS that fun. The women ARE that beautiful, confident and intelligent. The school IS very good. If you can't recruit to Miami, you can't recruit. It's really that simple...

It may be the mid-sized school in a small town, with the funny name and the MAC sports affiliation - but all you have to do as a recruiter is share what the school is truly about and 90% of your job is done. After that it's fully funded like every other top program...

Get over yourself. Miami is a nice college for a very specific type (preppy, conservative, wants to join a frat and major in business), but beyond that, it's a medium size public university in the middle of nowhere that is the second ranked and second most selective public university in its own state. At best, you're comically arrogant. At worst, you're hopelessly delusional about its place on the food chain as both a hockey program and a university.

[Dan]

Get over yourself. Miami is a nice college for a very specific type (preppy, conservative, wants to join a frat and major in business), but beyond that, it's a medium size public university in the middle of nowhere that is the second ranked and second most selective public university in its own state. At best, you're comically arrogant. At worst, you're hopelessly delusional about its place on the food chain as both a hockey program and a university.

Oh I see what's going on here - you're a threatened Ohio State fan!

[Hockeybuckeye]

Re: Miami Redhawks

Oh I see what's going on here - you're a threatened Ohio State fan!

I was actually in Oxford today and am the longest attending Ohio State fan and nothing about Miami I find threatening. In fact watching how your team performed this weekend I think if we played each other next weekend we'd swat you like a fly.
It is amusing that Miami desperately wants Enrico gone but backed themselves into a corner with the contract they gave him and refuse to spend the money they would owe him to terminate it.
You would think with their vaunted business school someone would know how to draft a contract giving the university an out if they needed it but someone thought he was going to be all that forever and ever it seems! LOL!

[Dan]

I was actually in Oxford today and am the longest attending Ohio State fan and nothing about Miami I find threatening. In fact watching how your team performed this weekend I think if we played each other next weekend we'd swat you like a fly.
It is amusing that Miami desperately wants Enrico gone but backed themselves into a corner with the contract they gave him and refuse to spend the money they would owe him to terminate it.
You would think with their vaunted business school someone would know how to draft a contract giving the university an out if they needed it but someone thought he was going to be all that forever and ever it seems! LOL!

Yet, in the middle of the best year in school history you're both in here speculating (read: desperately hoping) about why Miami might be down for good...

I've never seen a major athletic department fan base act like bigger bunch of Jan Brady's than Ohio State does regarding Miami Hockey. I suppose that's inevitable when you barely need a second hand to count relevant OSU seasons or Buckeye victories over Miami since I graduated college in 2003, but it's also pretty pathetic (almost as pathetic as a Big10 university crying to the state government that a mid-sized university in the middle of nowhere has a better academic reputation and lobbying/buying itself superficial new academic ranking)...

BTW - for as much effort that has gone into making OSU an improved academic institution and programs designed to funnel top OH students to OSU and away from the rest of the state schools over recent years, according to prep scholar the average ACT score at both schools is 29, the 25-percentile score is 27-26 for OSU and the 75-percentile score is 31 a piece. The average GPA at OSU is 3.78 to 3.76 at Miami. For all your money, politics and acclaim you can't do better than that? Are you really in here bragging about having improved to Miami's equal...? I guess in your defense we had a huge head start...

* https://www.prepscholar.com/act/s/colleges/Ohio-State-University-ACT-scores-GPA
* https://www.prepscholar.com/act/s/colleges/Miami-University-ACT-scores-GPA

Congrats, though, on all your research dollars, graduate programs, the size of your endowment and all that other crap that pumps up USNews rankings but means zip to undergrads (an actual undergraduate focus on the other hand?). Also the giant pools of subpar applicants you get to reject, because you're a name athletic department - well, most of your athletic dept anyway...

You guys have been pining for what Miami Hockey had for years - and your fear of what might happen if Miami bounces back drips off every word you've posted in this thread.

I'd be more concerned with sustaining BIG success - you know since those are your conference rivals and not Miami. With four college hockey blue bloods and two more major athletic departments that out invest you in the sport - I'd keep your focus where it belongs. Instead you're still stuck on the 'inferior' school that punked you for years and probably will again. If I could wish for anything next year it would be for you to schedule Miami and finally win a game - so you could just release this pent up obsession...

And don't think I haven't noticed that you guys spend half your threads complaining about how nasty Miami fans have invaded and been rude or condescending to you. I've never said a word to a single one of you aside from posting once in your thread earlier this year to express that I thought that behavior from Miami fans was unfortunate. Yet, here you are in a Miami thread doing the exact same things the minute you get a whiff that OSU Hockey might finally turn into a real boy. Clearly you've just been getting what you've been giving - and you're mad you're always on the wrong side of it...

[Dan]

In fact watching how your team performed this weekend I think if we played each other next weekend we'd swat you like a fly!

I mean, you gotta win one eventually. Let's hope the tenth time is the charm and that you win more than one of the next fifteen this time around...

Long time OSU fan? Has it really been a long time or has it just felt long...?

[Hockeybuckeye]

Re: Miami Redhawks

Hit a nerve did we Dan?
You can rant and claim you "punked" us even though it's only in your mind. At best you can claim equality to OSU as you have no national title in hockey either but I see us getting there before you do. I have more insight to both programs than you could know and I'm a Miami parent and don't have any issue with the school itself. My issue was solely how when your program was riding high was how arrogant and insufferable many of your fans became. They've become pretty much invisible here on forum now that your "greatness" has faded away and that amuses me. And I'll give Steve Cady your regards next time I talk to him.