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2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

If anyone would care to provide a scouting report for NMU, here is one for Cornell.

Built from the net out like all Schafer teams. All 5 players are always responsible and commit to defense in all zones. Lots of shot blocking and taking away your lanes, forcing the play back to the periphery. We do not chase aggressively so you can shoot from downtown all day.

Unlike recent years we have an excellent transitional game this year -- this is the big improvement over the '19 team that was one game short of the Frozen Four and why we're hoping for a lot more. We can turn the play around like lightning. It disorients our fans who are used to a "return to HQ for orders" style from prior years. If the '03 FF team was Douglas Haig, this team is George Patton. We're cav now -- everything is dynamics.

We roll four lines, three of which are dangerous -- the Bauld line is an intercept line to neutralize the best opposing line. As with the last several years we are very good at shutting down the top line but the second line can sometimes squeak through. All 12 forwards play solid defense. A few of them (Barron, Locke, Donaldson) are legitimately dangerous forwards. Successful opponents have played us balanced -- getting obsessed with Barron equals death because Schafer's matches and the other guys' adjustments will gradually box you in to bad matchups. We are like playing a balanced pro set offense -- changing the DB matchups on the fly is critical.

The D has several very strong offensive players (Kaldis, Malinski, Mitchell) to go with The System (TM). They are deep; they don't make too many mistakes. Galajda in net is excellent.

The pp is strong. The penalty kill is terrible, so the key to staying with us is obvious. Stay outta the box and put us there. There's no apparent reason why the kill is so bad (the Principle of Sufficient Reason is woo) so I'm going with SSS and hoping we'll turn it around on, say, you. :)

Strengths: defense, goaltending, transition, adaptability, situational decision making
Weaknesses: penalty kill, lack of an A+ scoring terror, can be stung by relentless forechecking

If any of you are coming to Ithaca I hope you enjoy Lynah. It's my favorite barn. Others (Gutterson, Appleton, Matthews) are more beautiful, but our place has an atmosphere which can completely change a game. Have fun. I wish I could tell you where to eat in town but all the good places have closed. :(
 
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Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

2020 NMU Hockey (13-7-2) National Rankings

January 13th, 2020

#15 - PAIRWISE
#15 - RPI
#16 - USA TODAY
#17 - USCHO
#17 - KRACH

#15 NMU @ #1 Cornell (12-1-2) This Weekend
 
Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

A few simple points about NMU:

- Loughran is tied for 1st in the country for goals scored w/ 17. He's a player who never gives up and will take any and all opportunities presented to him. Vincent DeMay has 12 goals himself, so its not just a single player who can light the lamp.

- This team as a whole is very blue collar. They will punch the time clock and not punch out until the final buzzer has sounded. They've shown that they can play from behind, so don't get complacent.

- NMU is "young and dumb" at times. You can frustrate us and get us to take stupid penalties. It's usually the reason we're in the holes that we've climbed out of this year.

- Goaltending has been a work in progress, but has been decent as of late.
 
Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

RaceBoarder said:
A few simple points about NMU:

- Loughran is tied for 1st in the country for goals scored w/ 17. He's a player who never gives up and will take any and all opportunities presented to him. Vincent DeMay has 12 goals himself, so its not just a single player who can light the lamp.

- This team as a whole is very blue collar. They will punch the time clock and not punch out until the final buzzer has sounded. They've shown that they can play from behind, so don't get complacent.

- NMU is "young and dumb" at times. You can frustrate us and get us to take stupid penalties. It's usually the reason we're in the holes that we've climbed out of this year.

- Goaltending has been a work in progress, but has been decent as of late.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I expect two very good games.
 
Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

MTUHuskies said:
But only this weekend.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

You know, NMU vs MTU is an interesting rivalry. I live down here near Louisville (Ville fan), and I want Kentucky to get waxed in every game they play. But I pull for Tech, at times, especially against the Big Ten schools. I guess it's a U.P. thing. I pull for Lake Superior, too, at times.
 
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Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

devildog said:
You know, NMU vs MTU is an interesting rivalry. I live down here near Louisville (Ville fan), and I want Kentucky to get waxed in every game they play. But I pull for Tech, at times, especially against the Big Ten schools. I guess it's a U.P. thing. I pull for Lake Superior, too, at times.
Click to expand...
There's no comparison. Neither Louisville nor Kentucky are in a mid major conference where OOC wins are so drastically important, even for conference teams not involved in the games.
 
Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

devildog said:
You know, NMU vs MTU is an interesting rivalry. I live down here near Louisville (Ville fan), and I want Kentucky to get waxed in every game they play. But I pull for Tech, at times, especially against the Big Ten schools. I guess it's a U.P. thing. I pull for Lake Superior, too, at times.
Click to expand...
NMU is kinda like my little brother, I like to tease him and beat on him, but if someone outside the family (WCHA) does, I'll stick up for him (within reason).

So yeah, I guess it might be a Yooper thing.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 
Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

devildog said:
You know, NMU vs MTU is an interesting rivalry. I live down here near Louisville (Ville fan), and I want Kentucky to get waxed in every game they play. But I pull for Tech, at times, especially against the Big Ten schools. I guess it's a U.P. thing. I pull for Lake Superior, too, at times.
Click to expand...

Clarkson and St. Lawrence are like this too. Part of it is they are a gazillion miles from everybody else but only 8 miles apart. So when they play in a tournament all their fans root for each other, but when they play each other it's a bloodthirsty civil war.

The Boston schools (BU, BC, Northeastern) OTOH all root for thermonuclear destruction of each other no matter the circumstance.

These are definitely two fundamentally different types of rivalries. I think the mutually supportive ones have schools which feel they have a common identity that's disparaged outside their pairing. That explains the North County, and maybe the UP too.

I don't know how the U Minn schools or Denver/CC, or UAA/UAF feel, but I would expect the Minny schools to rip on each other and the CO and AK schools to be mutually supportive.
 
Kepler said:
No Loughran tonight.
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That will hurt. We're doing a good job of clogging the ice and making life miserable. But I fear that we can't keep at it like this for 60 minutes.

Cornell almost appears to be holding on to wait it out and pounce.
 
Re: 2019-20 NMU Hockey Season

See you again tomorrow night. That was the most entertaining game we've played all year. Like a nice one night stand: really sloppy and somewhat embarrassing but fun.
 
RaceBoarder said:
A few simple points about NMU:

- Loughran is tied for 1st in the country for goals scored w/ 17. He's a player who never gives up and will take any and all opportunities presented to him. Vincent DeMay has 12 goals himself, so its not just a single player who can light the lamp.

- This team as a whole is very blue collar. They will punch the time clock and not punch out until the final buzzer has sounded. They've shown that they can play from behind, so don't get complacent.

- NMU is "young and dumb" at times. You can frustrate us and get us to take stupid penalties. It's usually the reason we're in the holes that we've climbed out of this year.

- Goaltending has been a work in progress, but has been decent as of late.
Click to expand...

Kent is 6-1-2/ 1.77/ .940 in his last 10 appearances
 
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