UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

[Aerman]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Despite Wild E’s demonstration the other night, the force is not with us.

[chickod]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Or heck, we can always rely on the venerable Obi Wan Kenobi for help...channeling my inner Princess Leia since all other pleadings for help have fallen on deaf ears...This is our most desperate hour! Other teams have tried to help, but we have not been able to accept their gifts. We face the most formidable of foes...nowhere else to turn!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RDIJfoBhFU

I DID see a tinge of blue in that hologram, though...so maybe Obi Wan Kenobi is a UNH fan...

[bakchk20]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

It's going to be rough

Opportunity to carve all that new real estate into board-side boxes! Cha-ching $$$...

[Snively65]

Or heck, we can always rely on the venerable Obi Wan Kenobi for help...channeling my inner Princess Leia since all other pleadings for help have fallen on deaf ears...This is our most desperate hour! SOME other teams have tried to help, but we have not been able to accept their gifts. We face the most formidable of foes...nowhere else to turn!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RDIJfoBhFU

JFYP to "Some other teams....." but, not those turncoat black bears; cannot be trusted. Not that it matters, taking only 1 point from Ospreys, who were vulnerable to giving up all 4 points.

[HockeyRef]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

JFYP to "Some other teams....." but, not those turncoat black bears; cannot be trusted. Not that it matters, taking only 1 point from Ospreys, who were vulnerable to giving up all 4 points.

Well I would agree 100%! See if we ever give them some help, harrumph!!! (We kind of did help them this season giving up 4 ) This whole thing is reminiscent of the story about the guy who ignores warnings of a flood to evacuate. When the flood comes he's on the roof; refuses a boat and even a helicopter. Finally the guy drowns, goes to heaven and asks God why he didn't intervene. I don't have to tell you the punch line...and agree that this UML team wasn't the team they've certainly had in the past. Points were there for the taking this weekend, and a few others, sadly. Whattareyagonna do??

[acs64]

So I’m not an engineer, but would it be more cost effective (or is it even feasible) to lower the ice surface instead of basically elevating the ENTIRE arena?

Bingo ! Yes I am an engineer..... gotta believe it’s cheaper to remove the floor, put a short retaining wall around, new pipes and ramps down. Who came up with the brilliant idea to raise the entire seating? Which begs the obvious question, why is it needed to shrink the rink in the first place ?

[acs64]

JFYP to "Some other teams....." but, not those turncoat black bears; cannot be trusted. Not that it matters, taking only 1 point from Ospreys, who were vulnerable to giving up all 4 points.

Yah stop blaming your inadequacies on our inadequacies !!

[bakchk20]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Bingo ! Yes I am an engineer..... gotta believe it’s cheaper to remove the floor, put a short retaining wall around, new pipes and ramps down. Who came up with the brilliant idea to raise the entire seating? Which begs the obvious question, why is it needed to shrink the rink in the first place ?

I'm not an engineer either but some engineer determined that acceptable hydraulic forces woud likley be exceeded to lower the concrete surface, given that the current concrete sub-structure is close to or already below the water table. As an engineer, does that make sense?

[HockeyRef]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Bingo ! Yes I am an engineer..... gotta believe it’s cheaper to remove the floor, put a short retaining wall around, new pipes and ramps down. Who came up with the brilliant idea to raise the entire seating? Which begs the obvious question, why is it needed to shrink the rink in the first place ?

While this comes as no surprise to long time followers of the 'shrink the rink' posters, this is obviously part of the reason: (from the article quoted earlier in these posts/Seacoast online)

“The Whittemore Center ice surface needs to be replaced, and the University is currently performing its final analysis,” Scarano wrote in an email this week. “Our hockey programs have interest in changing the dimensions of the new ice surface, and this is the natural time to explore that option.”

Not trying to stir up anything, but let's call this what it is..in addition to the obvious work that needs to be done, there's an additional interest involved. (always is)

[Snively65]

I'm not an engineer either but some engineer determined that acceptable hydraulic forces woud likley be exceeded to lower the concrete surface, given that the current concrete sub-structure is close to or already below the water table. As an engineer, does that make sense?

Not an engineer either, but am a geologist, and read a few years ago when narrowing the rink was being discussed before the more recent compressor problems that depth to bedrock is a limitation (need for lots of dynamite, which presumably was why the floor was not sunk lower in the first place), rather than the water table, which could be grouted away in any case.

[Chuck Murray]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Away on vacation, just checking in during a down moment, and seeing the results … wow, the only thing worse than UNH continuing to find new and inventive ways to not win big games, is Northeastern finding a way to lose to UVM twice (anyone following things on the EHA thread, pop quiz - where did The Chancellor spend the weekend?). Crazy to think UNH is still alive, albeit by the slimmest of margins.

Couple of points:

(1) Playing for nothing other than "seeding" as your motivation is pretty abstract, and can be a tough sell in the room. If it wasn't BC and Coach York involved, I'd smell an opportunity for UNH. But it IS BC and Coach York …

(2) … so my expectations are low, because say what you will, but this isn't even "Champions of November" UNH, or Coach Umile's 'Cats from back in the day, when they might still find a way over an un(der)focused BC squad. Despite hopes that we still harbored only a mere month ago to the contrary, this is still a fragile program barely over a year out from an abysmal 12 month record during the calendar year 2018.

(3) It is to be expected that players will make mistakes. It is expected that players will learn from their mistakes. The more experienced the player, the more reasonable it is to expect players to learn from mistakes, and (importantly) not repeat them. And your leaders need to be the players who are the most trustworthy folks, who should be the ones least likely to repeat dumb mistakes at the worst possible time. I've kept my powder mostly dry on this year's captain, despite some uncaptain-like mistakes he's made along the way. That he's gone and done it again on Friday night, at a point in the game - no, in the season as a whole - when he needed to keep his head and play things out properly … well, that's inexcusable. And no apologies can be offered to make things right. I've roasted other captain selections in the past because they were hopelessly naïve, where it was far above the kids' station in life. Those were 100% on Coach Umile, either for making that selection, or for allowing the process to produce that person. That is NOT the case in this situation. 100% on the player.

This is a UNH team that turned out still to be flawed, and still to be learning. The record suggests they will post some modest advances with their record, and that's better than a sharp stick in the eye. But there was an opportunity here to push the boat out further, and due to a combination of factors, mostly arising from the program's recent past inability to even play in truly meaningful games, they turned out to be un(der)prepared to truly compete in the kind of games they've fallen short in down the stretch.

Even if by some bizarre twist of fate - and yes, Northeastern is truly in free-fall and that just dropped into UNH's lap, and *could* still bail them out next weekend - UNH "makes it", it will be a quick two-and-out the following weekend, so we're all coming to terms with the finality of this season coming up short of the HE Tourney. The only thing to be gained by UNH from this point forward is experience, and learning how competing down the stretch is a different animal to beating UMass in January or BC in November, or whenever. As fans, we know this now, and our speculation and our hopes have led to answers that are disappointing, but we know better where things stand.

Anyway … we can't blame it on officiating … we can't blame it on not having a Jumbotron … we're going to find out it has nothing to do with the size of the rink, or the quality of the weight room as well. At some point, you run out of excuses, and you just have to go out and perform, and MS7 and his guys are going to have to dig in and work even harder, and impose their collective wills to BOTH recruit better players AND help those players to improve while under their watch.

Season's grade for UNH: C-plus. Average, maybe unlucky a bit not to get a #6 or #7 seed with their record, but in the end, when they had their chance to push to those levels or even past them, they didn't have it in them. Sad, but you are what your record says you are.

JMHO.

[Greg Ambrose]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Since I am not going to either of the BC games next weekend, I figured I would address a couple of season ending topics right now before they get too stale:
First, we can all kvetch about this play or that play over the last couple of weekends, but the bottom line is that UNH lost a game to Merrimack which was totally unacceptable and they threw away a total of three points to Maine and Lowell respectively because of ill advised penalties by their team captain. So much for senior leadership. But the overriding reason that UNH will not be in the playoffs this year is because of their dismal offense. They are unbelievably bad five on five, with almost no ability to create turnovers and turn them into odd man rushes. And they were almost as bad on the PP, seemingly content to pass the puck around endlessly, winding up taking one shot before the puck is cleared. Too much of that for my taste. If you don’t get pucks to the net, you are not going to score goals. It’s as simple as that. The coaching staff needs a complete retooling of their offensive mindset because what they are doing now just ain’t working.

Now onto the news about the rink. It is obvious to me the powers that be that make the decisions on what to do with the physical plant of the Whittemore Center have their heads up their you know what. I read the Fosters article where Scarano unintentionally revealed that he really doesn’t give a s*** about the hockey program. If he did, would he really consider a radical configuration of the ice surface without taking into consideration how the end product would affect the “fan experience?” He says further study needs to be undertaken. If what he says is more than corporate bs, I challenge him to create computer models which would show what the view of the ice surface would be in various locations of the arena. Based on what a friend of mind did last night, if the change is made, there are going to be a lot of unhappy people. Narrowing the ice surface will require moving the boards farther away from the seating area throughout the arena except behind the nets. This will, of course, move the field of play farther away from those in attendance. Those in the higher up rows will probably not be affected but, based on what I saw and was told last night, those who have seats in the first five or six rows better consider moving because your view of the play, particularly along the boards and in the corners, will be practically non-existent. It appears that downsizing the rink will effectively reduce the capacity by 600 or 700 seats in prime viewing areas. So much for paying attention to the fans.

Finally, at least for me, the change in the dimensions of the rink is just so unnecessary. The argument is that the larger sheet prevents UNH from attracting quality players and, therefore, prevents them from winning. This argument ignores the fact that there are several schools out west that have large sheets and despite this “disadvantage,” do quite well. And,,of course, it goes without saying that in the first 20 years that the Whit was open, UNH made the NCAA tournament 16 times, made the Frozen Four four times and won several Hockey East regular season and playoff championships. Back then there was apparently no problem with the size of the rink. Might it be because we had better players? Here’s a suggestion Marty. Instead of spending a million bucks or more to chop up the arena and, in the process, ruin the “fan experience” for hundreds, how about turning that money over to the hockey program so that they could increase their recruiting budget?

[Snively65]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Who wants into this over/under contest on 2.5 UNH goals this coming final regular season weekend? Why 2.5?

[Darius]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

Thread title suggestion for whoever shuts the lights off on this one in a week:
UNH offseason thread: goodbye Lake Whitt, hello Towse Pond

Winner.

[Darius]

Re: UNH Hockey: Where Do We Go From Here....

This is a UNH team that turned out still to be flawed, and still to be learning. The record suggests they will post some modest advances with their record, and that's better than a sharp stick in the eye. But there was an opportunity here to push the boat out further, and due to a combination of factors, mostly arising from the program's recent past inability to even play in truly meaningful games, they turned out to be un(der)prepared to truly compete in the kind of games they've fallen short in down the stretch.

It's a shame that the season looks like it will be over after next weekend since they really showed what they could do early on. Same mistakes as usual though down the stretch, untimely penalties, abysmal passing and there is your end result. Tonight was really reminiscent of the last two Umile years in just how sloppy the play was.

Yeah, this is gonna take longer than it seemed five weeks ago.