Re: Bulldogs 09-10 Season
UMD Sweeps with 2-1 win.. Steck played well...
QUOTE=JosephPSchmoe;4586332]Nice to see Steck get a complete game. She won't play much next year, if at all.[/QUOTE]
I'm thrilled that coach Miller started Steck in game 2. The back up needs to be prepared. Harss is only an injury away.
Binnyrus, I’m starting to think that you’re psychic.
With all the comments and questions here in the recent past about goaltenders, such as those quoted above, as well as those with respect to Grogan and Lura from the UM series a couple of weekends ago (sans Raty) on this and on other threads, here’s another post to add to the mix with a few more questions being posed. (If I would have remembered before I started this how much information and opinion I’ve heard in the last year or so on this topic instead of having it occur to me as I was typing, I don’t think that I would have proceeded…so, sorry for the lengthy post).
What's been happening on your team at that position, until very recently, was getting curiouser and curiouser...until it just seemed long past strange for a number of reasons. When discussions down at the rink have turned to various local players’ careers this one has gotten its share of air time. I am referring here to Steck. Those who are familiar with her play and the situation who were previously scratching their heads early in the season have more recently been shaking them. Why Miller hasn’t been playing her, until very recently, is a real mystery. Some background might be helpful, and some unusual things that I heard in the off season, useful, in understanding the reason for that comment.
When Miller was aggressively recruiting Steck she emphatically assured Steck and her family several times that if she committed to UMD that Miller would play her often to challenge Martin for the #1 position because that's how highly she thought of Steck's abilities. It would be reasonable to assume that those repeated assurances were a major component in Steck's committing to UMD. Then came her injury and a year off. Miller still wanted her, so everything was postponed for a year.
As if it wasn't enough to be having to regain her abilities and confidence after the major injury, I've heard that when she was ready to play last fall, meaning the fall of 2008, that she was playing with a fractured finger and a completely torn ligament in that finger which was apparently sustained in a pre-game warm up early in the season...but, she still played when called upon. She was also initially playing with skates borrowed from Martin because hers hadn't arrived (they had a year to get that right) and when they finally showed up months later, they were the wrong size...but she wore them anyway. To top it off, she was playing with a glove that didn't fit properly that was constantly slipping off her hand regardless of countless attempts to make adjustments to it.
Sounds like a bit of a handicap. All I can say for sure is, thanks to the MSU commentator's making a note of it, and their handy replay feature last year, that that glove did cost her at least one goal last season that I saw...it was falling off her hand during a breakaway on her. Two or three more goals that don't go in during the year if these handicaps didn't exist, if they were related, then all of a sudden her stats would have been quite commendable and who knows how the rest of the season would have unfolded for her. In that game, her only start of the year, just after Martin got injured, she didn't play overly well...even though UMD won that game rather handily...but, as mentioned, at least one of the goals scored on her was directly attributable to the equipment problem just described.
Based on there having been no shortage of comments volunteered in these local discussions on the next point, I’d say here’s where it starts getting more interesting…(this is the general consensus, as I recall it)…the following weekend was a series vs UM. Had she played well in the MSU game and/or if Miller had played her enough up to that point to allow Steck to work out the bugs, it is reasonable to assume that Miller would have started her vs UM (and if so, again, who knows how things would have turned out for her from there) since Miller said that she struggled with that decision until the last minute...but under the circumstances of having an off game in her first start just days earlier (for whatever reasons) and Miller's not having played her much up until then, it seems that Miller had, in a way, painted herself into a corner...but, under those circumstances, made the right decision and started Ellison vs a powerful team like UM. (The point here being that Steck hadn't been given much playing time and only one start in which to develop game confidence again and hadn’t played up to her abilities in that game and so to start her in the next game which was a high pressure/important game vs UM, as well as being in the home stretch, might have been asking/expecting a lot). To Ellison's credit she played extremely well, so from that point onward it was a no brainer for Miller to keep starting her...and she kept playing well. Great for the team and Ellison...a little less so for Steck, but all logical in the sequence of events.
I saw her playing once this past summer at one of those scrimmages that I mentioned last season and from what I saw, and remember, she looked better than before the injury and the year off. From what I’ve heard, that opinion seems to be shared by others. The guy that runs those scrimmages can’t speak highly enough of her. Both his WHL junior players and AHL players, among others, (his “monsters” as he collectively calls them) are constantly on him to have her come out instead of any male goaltenders because they tell him that she gives them more of a challenge…and that’s what they are there for…to improve their game. I even heard two of them literally cussing her out during the action that I witnessed , (they ignored the puck and the play momentarily and skated back in front of her to tell her, in no uncertain terms, what was on their minds), because she was constantly frustrating them. It was actually quite funny…these guys were seriously po’d. These are not D1 women…they are junior men and higher. And from what I was told by the guy in charge and the little I saw, they hold nothing back on her, either with their moves or with their shots, but that is not the case for the other female goalies as well as for several of the male goalies that he has out. In his opinion this is the ultimate sign of respect from these, his most talented players. I also overheard him saying that she could play D1 without equipment and still play well. This is the regard that she is held in.
With that in mind, when this season began, surprisingly, at least to some of us, Harss was started. With all due respect to her, from the games that I saw she only played well in one out of the first half dozen or so and looked quite shaky in the rest. More surprisingly, she kept being started. To her credit, though, she has steadily improved into a solid and capable keeper. Some of her technicals seem to have improved as well..
The major difference is that Harss, when given the initial chance, didn’t play well but was still played constantly in spite of that and as a result has improved and has had a chance to prove herself. Steck hasn’t been given that same opportunity and now the end of the season and the playoffs are looming…again.
Based on Miller’s recruiting promises to Steck, if you conclude that Harss doesn’t have Martin’s abilities then you have to wonder why Steck hasn’t been starting, or at the very least, why she hasn’t been played regularly? Even if you conclude that Harss does have Martin’s abilities, you‘d still have to ask the same questions. Therein lies the mystery. So what could the reason be for Miller’s not playing/starting Steck, minor injury downtime aside? Are we fat chewers missing something?
continued...
