What's new
By:
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Given that many of you on this forum have been avid followers of the Lakers for much longer than myself (I have only started following them a couple of years ago), I was wondering if any of you could shed some light on exactly why Anzalone was canned and replaced with Roque? I know Anzalone's record during that stint almost speaks for itself, but it appears as though Roque's best years were his first two, when it would have been Anzalone's recruiting class. (and I swear I'm not trolling, I'm looking for an answer.)
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Anzalone:
01-02: 8-27-2 (.216)
02-03: 6-28-4 (.158)
03-04: 9-20-7 (.250)
04-05: 9-22-7 (.234)

jsmithe said:
Given that many of you on this forum have been avid followers of the Lakers for much longer than myself (I have only started following them a couple of years ago), I was wondering if any of you could shed some light on exactly why Anzalone was canned and replaced with Roque? I know Anzalone's record during that stint almost speaks for itself, but it appears as though Roque's best years were his first two, when it would have been Anzalone's recruiting class. (and I swear I'm not trolling, I'm looking for an answer.)
Click to expand...
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Anzalone took over a team from Scott Borek that was loaded with Division 3 talent . One of the first things that happened was a bunch of players left the team when they realized under Anzalone they would actually have to work hard to stay on the team . Anzalone was building a system at lake State but some thought the team should have been back on top almost right away. Had Anzalone not been his own worse enemy with how he treated people,he probably would have stayed and the program today would have been a top program again.
 
sm2pk said:
Anzalone took over a team from Scott Borek that was loaded with Division 3 talent . One of the first things that happened was a bunch of players left the team when they realized under Anzalone they would actually have to work hard to stay on the team . Anzalone was building a system at lake State but some thought the team should have been back on top almost right away. Had Anzalone not been his own worse enemy with how he treated people,he probably would have stayed and the program today would have been a top program again.
Click to expand...
Anzalone hasn't had a top program anywhere since leaving LSSU the first time, except for one year in the ECHL where he got himself fired barely into the next season.
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

jsmithe said:
Given that many of you on this forum have been avid followers of the Lakers for much longer than myself (I have only started following them a couple of years ago), I was wondering if any of you could shed some light on exactly why Anzalone was canned and replaced with Roque? I know Anzalone's record during that stint almost speaks for itself, but it appears as though Roque's best years were his first two, when it would have been Anzalone's recruiting class. (and I swear I'm not trolling, I'm looking for an answer.)
Click to expand...
I'm not sure we'll ever know the full answer to that. Although his W-L record was terrible during his second stint with the Lakers, I don't believe that was why he was fired. My understanding is that when he was hired the expectations were that the team would continue to get its butt kicked for quite a few years. It had really fallen into the pits and become very undisciplined. Although the records were bad, I think Anzalone did re-establish some discipline in the team. They were taking fewer penalties. So although the records don't reflect it, progress was being made. What would their W-L records be if he had stayed on longer, I don't know. Jim Roque and Tim Christian were his assistant coaches so recruiting should have continued to improve. As to why he was fired, someone posted a link to a lawsuit on here a couple of years (?) ago indicating that he was verbally abusive to players, which I take to mean he cussed too much. So that lawsuit seems to be part of the story. There were also some rumors of recruiting violations but nothing (penalties) became of it so that is unlikely to be true (unless in some very minor way). I don't think that Anzalone and Roque parted on good terms when his firing came, so one has to wonder whether Roque threw Anzalone under the bus in some way or another. Like I said earlier, we may never know the full story.
 
Last edited:
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

jsmithe said:
Given that many of you on this forum have been avid followers of the Lakers for much longer than myself (I have only started following them a couple of years ago), I was wondering if any of you could shed some light on exactly why Anzalone was canned and replaced with Roque? I know Anzalone's record during that stint almost speaks for itself, but it appears as though Roque's best years were his first two, when it would have been Anzalone's recruiting class. (and I swear I'm not trolling, I'm looking for an answer.)
Click to expand...

Thanks for starting this discussion up again. It's only the 15th one on this thread about this subject.
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Bill said:
I'm not sure we'll ever know the full answer to that. Although his W-L record was terrible during his second stint with the Lakers, I don't believe that was why he was fired. My understanding is that when he was hired the expectations were that the team would continue to get its butt kicked for quite a few years. It had really fallen into the pits and become very undisciplined. Although the records were bad, I think Anzalone did re-establish some discipline in the team. They were taking fewer penalties. So although the records don't reflect it, progress was being made. What would their W-L records be if he had stayed on longer, I don't know. Jim Roque and Tim Christian were his assistant coaches so recruiting should have continued to improve. As to why he was fired, someone posted a link to a lawsuit on here a couple of years (?) ago indicating that he was verbally abusive to players, which I take to mean he cussed too much. So that lawsuit seems to be part of the story. There were also some rumors of recruiting violations but nothing (penalties) became of it so that is unlikely to be true (unless in some very minor way). I don't think that Anzalone and Roque parted on good terms when his firing came, so one has to wonder whether Roque threw Anzalone under the bus in some way or another. Like I said earlier, we may never know the full story.
Click to expand...

"The reasons cited for the discharge included repeatedly swearing at and verbally abusing players after being instructed not to do so and failing to secure medical attention for a severelyinjured student hockey player. After Plaintiff was terminated, LSSU became aware of several incidents where Plaintiff had violated NCAA rules."

http://cdm16110.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16110coll2/id/101081

Page 4 is a real eye opener. The court ruled LSSU showed plenty of evidence that he verbally abused players, deliberately violated several NCAA rules, and refused to help a seriously injured student athlete. So let's all stop pretending that he got the short end or we aren't sure why he got fired. The proof is in the pudding; he was a scumbag who broke the rules. He got fired for that, and that alone. If anyone else has additional information, feel free to send it my way. But unless Bill Crawford, Betty Youngblood, or Frank Anzalone himself committed perjury, the facts are in that court document.
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Lakers2Glory said:
"The reasons cited for the discharge included repeatedly swearing at and verbally abusing players after being instructed not to do so and failing to secure medical attention for a severelyinjured student hockey player. After Plaintiff was terminated, LSSU became aware of several incidents where Plaintiff had violated NCAA rules."

http://cdm16110.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16110coll2/id/101081

Page 4 is a real eye opener. The court ruled LSSU showed plenty of evidence that he verbally abused players, deliberately violated several NCAA rules, and refused to help a seriously injured student athlete. So let's all stop pretending that he got the short end or we aren't sure why he got fired. The proof is in the pudding; he was a scumbag who broke the rules. He got fired for that, and that alone. If anyone else has additional information, feel free to send it my way. But unless Bill Crawford, Betty Youngblood, or Frank Anzalone himself committed perjury, the facts are in that court document.
Click to expand...

Must have been a packed jury up there!!
 
Last edited:
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Lakers2Glory said:
"The reasons cited for the discharge included repeatedly swearing at and verbally abusing players after being instructed not to do so and failing to secure medical attention for a severelyinjured student hockey player. After Plaintiff was terminated, LSSU became aware of several incidents where Plaintiff had violated NCAA rules."

http://cdm16110.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16110coll2/id/101081

Page 4 is a real eye opener. The court ruled LSSU showed plenty of evidence that he verbally abused players, deliberately violated several NCAA rules, and refused to help a seriously injured student athlete. So let's all stop pretending that he got the short end or we aren't sure why he got fired. The proof is in the pudding; he was a scumbag who broke the rules. He got fired for that, and that alone. If anyone else has additional information, feel free to send it my way. But unless Bill Crawford, Betty Youngblood, or Frank Anzalone himself committed perjury, the facts are in that court document.
Click to expand...
Obviously Anzalone's lawsuit, which was overturned, is a big part of the story. My point was simply that we'll likely never know the full story of his firing. The court document provides the results of the lawsuit and a generalization of the facts, but does't really tell us specifically what happened from either LSSU's or Anzalone's point of view. Yes, it sounds like he cussed at players too much despite being warned not to do so. I find the NCAA rules violations statements somewhat puzzling. The NCAA normally doesn't take to rules violations too kindly. But I don't recall them coming down on LSSU with any types of sanctions/penalties. Did I miss (or forget) something? If they didn't penalize us fairly severely, then it seems like whatever violations that occurred likely were pretty minor despite what the court document implies. (Of course that doesn't justify the violations.) A troubling item in the court document is the statement that Anzalone failed to obtain medical treatment for an injured player. That certainly sounds bad, but also hard to fathom. Why would he do that? Without hearing both sides of the story in detail, it's hard to understand. I don't know Anzalone, I'm not trying to defend him, and I'm not saying LSSU acted unjustly in firing him. I'm just saying I think there is more to the firing story than we know, or are ever likely to know. It would be informative to hear Anzalone's side of the story along with the full LSSU side, but that will probably never happen.
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Bill,I remember the injured player thing where he was flown from Omaha back to Henry Ford for the surgery. If my memory serves me right,Anzalone played down the injury as if the player was overstating the seriousness of it.
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Bill said:
Obviously Anzalone's lawsuit, which was overturned, is a big part of the story. My point was simply that we'll likely never know the full story of his firing. The court document provides the results of the lawsuit and a generalization of the facts, but does't really tell us specifically what happened from either LSSU's or Anzalone's point of view. Yes, it sounds like he cussed at players too much despite being warned not to do so. I find the NCAA rules violations statements somewhat puzzling. The NCAA normally doesn't take to rules violations too kindly. But I don't recall them coming down on LSSU with any types of sanctions/penalties. Did I miss (or forget) something? If they didn't penalize us fairly severely, then it seems like whatever violations that occurred likely were pretty minor despite what the court document implies. (Of course that doesn't justify the violations.) A troubling item in the court document is the statement that Anzalone failed to obtain medical treatment for an injured player. That certainly sounds bad, but also hard to fathom. Why would he do that? Without hearing both sides of the story in detail, it's hard to understand. I don't know Anzalone, I'm not trying to defend him, and I'm not saying LSSU acted unjustly in firing him. I'm just saying I think there is more to the firing story than we know, or are ever likely to know. It would be informative to hear Anzalone's side of the story along with the full LSSU side, but that will probably never happen.
Click to expand...

Here is an article relating to the violations. They were secondary violations: http://www.cstv.com/sports/m-hockey/stories/102505aag.html
It points out that the actions were deliberate and were covered up.

I'm not out to get Anzalone, I just think people need to know the truth. Frank's record had nothing to do with him getting canned. He might still be the coach today if he kept going. Frank got Frank fired.
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

I really hope that the money comes to get rid of Roque and pay a new staff that you'll hopefully like better than him or Anzalone, a man with good common sense and a great nose for the game, finding young men to play it, and training them up right. Because, ****, it's depressing to read y'all talk about why Roque is or isn't a coach, this re-hash of the Anzalone nonsense (although I guess we were due, right?), or whether the third goalie gets any love from Roque or not. Because it would be great if you'd actually talk about hockey.

I mean, hell, you're probably going to make the playoffs as the #8 seed. Maybe talk about how you match up against opponents this weekend or against the Doggies? We all know that Roque's first line is in the AHL and all that other stuff. It would be really, really cool if you'd talk about the players you have within the constraints of the roll-out-the-pucks approach to "coaching" the game. Who's clicking? Who's going to play some hero hockey? Sure, the Lakers are sliding, but where are the positives?

Y'all are as negative as I feared that UAH fans would be. Maybe our fans are this negative, but they don't express it like y'all do.

****, y'all.

GFM
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

gfmorris said:
I really hope that the money comes to get rid of Roque and pay a new staff that you'll hopefully like better than him or Anzalone, a man with good common sense and a great nose for the game, finding young men to play it, and training them up right. Because, ****, it's depressing to read y'all talk about why Roque is or isn't a coach, this re-hash of the Anzalone nonsense (although I guess we were due, right?), or whether the third goalie gets any love from Roque or not. Because it would be great if you'd actually talk about hockey.

I mean, hell, you're probably going to make the playoffs as the #8 seed. Maybe talk about how you match up against opponents this weekend or against the Doggies? We all know that Roque's first line is in the AHL and all that other stuff. It would be really, really cool if you'd talk about the players you have within the constraints of the roll-out-the-pucks approach to "coaching" the game. Who's clicking? Who's going to play some hero hockey? Sure, the Lakers are sliding, but where are the positives?

Y'all are as negative as I feared that UAH fans would be. Maybe our fans are this negative, but they don't express it like y'all do.

****, y'all.

GFM
Click to expand...

So we can't talk about what we want to talk about on our thread ?

Laker Hockey has never been better. There are you happy Geof ?
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

PerkyforPrez said:
So we can't talk about what we want to talk about on our thread ?

Laker Hockey has never been better. There are you happy Geof ?
Click to expand...

Heh. I want good things for y'all, and that was my intent. If I missed in communicating that, that's on me.

GFM
 
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

gfmorris said:
I really hope that the money comes to get rid of Roque and pay a new staff that you'll hopefully like better than him or Anzalone, a man with good common sense and a great nose for the game, finding young men to play it, and training them up right. Because, ****, it's depressing to read y'all talk about why Roque is or isn't a coach, this re-hash of the Anzalone nonsense (although I guess we were due, right?), or whether the third goalie gets any love from Roque or not. Because it would be great if you'd actually talk about hockey.

I mean, hell, you're probably going to make the playoffs as the #8 seed. Maybe talk about how you match up against opponents this weekend or against the Doggies? We all know that Roque's first line is in the AHL and all that other stuff. It would be really, really cool if you'd talk about the players you have within the constraints of the roll-out-the-pucks approach to "coaching" the game. Who's clicking? Who's going to play some hero hockey? Sure, the Lakers are sliding, but where are the positives?

Y'all are as negative as I feared that UAH fans would be. Maybe our fans are this negative, but they don't express it like y'all do.

****, y'all.

GFM
Click to expand...
It would probably be easier to talk about match ups and other more direct hockey issues if the team weren't so predictable in recent years. It kind of boils down to this: fair to good first half of the season performance, then go into a slide the second half of the season. And this season there is even the Friday-Saturday contrast. With a few exceptions we play well on Fridays (10-3-1) and crappy on Saturdays (3-11). So any thoughts of how well we may match up against opponents and how that may affect any given series gets trumped by what day of the weekend it is and based upon that how well we're likely to play. It is what it is. I think most fans are tired of it and want a change. They see the overall talent level increasing in recent years but the overall results (W vs L and league standings) aren't breaking the pattern. While there is still time this season to break the pattern, it would probably come as a surprise to most Laker fans it that occurs.

As far as re-hashing the Anzalone firing goes, a new poster asked what happened to cause the firing. Sure I guess we could have ignored him/her, but how does that make us look.
 
Last edited:
Re: Lake Superior State Hockey Lakers 2013-2014 (part II)

Bill said:
It would probably be easier to talk about match ups and other more direct hockey issues if the team weren't so predictable in recent years. It kind of boils down to this: fair to good first half of the season performance, then go into a slide the second half of the season. And this season there is even the Friday-Saturday contrast. With a few exceptions we play well on Fridays (10-3-1) and crappy on Saturdays (3-11). So any thoughts of how well we may match up against opponents and how that may affect any given series gets trumped by what day of the weekend it is and based upon that how well we're likely to play. It is what it is. I think most fans are tired of it and want a change. They see the overall talent level increasing in recent years but the overall results (W vs L and league standings) aren't breaking the pattern. While there is still time this season to break the pattern, it would probably come as a surprise to most Laker fans it that occurs.
Click to expand...

That pattern says that there are conditioning problems in addition to strategy ones. I've seen that one before at UAH.

GFM
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top