The following is a copy of the e-mail that I sent to A.D. Dunbar 5 minutes ago, the only thing I cut out of it is my name at the bottom:
A.D. Dunbar,
I am currently a senior scheduled to graduate this spring and am an avid fan of the Laker hockey team. Over the course of my 4 years here I been to every home game the Lakers have had save for 5 or 6, and I have been watching hockey since the age of four, including 12 years as a player. I am writing to recommend that Laker coach Jim Roque be relieved of his duties as the head coach of the Laker hockey team.
Coach Roque has been head coach for 6 seasons now, which I believe most would agree is a very substantial body of work to judge his effectiveness as a coach on. During that period the Lakers have had a record of 85-108-39 for a winning percentange of .366, abysmal at best. 36 of those 85 wins (42%) came in Roque's first two seasons, when the roster he was coaching was almost completely filled with players that were recruited by the previous coach, Frank Anzalone. It is nothing but logical to expect a coach's record to improve once his roster contained players that he recruited to Lake State, because he would (or should) be bringing in players that fit his type of systems. His record as you know, did nothing but plummet since this time. The Lakers have finished between 3 and 10 games below .500 every season since that time, which is frankly unacceptable.
I think it's safe to say that we all live in the real world and can acknowledge the fact that in the present, LSSU is not the easiest place to recruit top notch players to. The schools that we are competing with are almost all blessed with bigger campuses, bigger "name appeal", finer facilities, and are located in more prototypical "college towns". Languishing near the bottom of the standings year in, year out, without making any changes even lessens the appeal to potential recuits and the respect level that recruits have for our school. I know a couple of D1 college hockey players (all that play in the CCHA currently) and over the years have had the opportunity to speak with not only them, but many of their teammates from the junior and college level and I can tell you that the level of respect that these type of players have for LSSU's program is very low. This type of reputation for LSSU that is held by many of the better players in North America is poisonous when it comes to recruiting efforts. For example, one of my friends played in the USHL for 2 seasons and over the course of that time EVERY other CCHA school got at least one recruit from my friends team, except for LSSU. When I asked my friend why, he directly stated "why would anyone want to go there? they're not any good and they have to be to even have a chance to get these type of guys, because they lack in so many other areas".
You have seen the other CCHA teams who have been bottom dwellers (Bowling Green, Western Michigan, Ohio State) recently make coaching changes after a few years of dismal success, and it is time that Lake State does the same. Is there a guarantee that a coaching change will change the amount of success that LSSU has? Absolutely not, OSU and BG had similar results this season (although keep in mind those coaches don't have many of their "own" players playing under them just yet) but there is just a good of a chance that it could (look at Western Michigan this season). The bottom line is that it is worth the chance to make an attempt to change the culture of LSSU's hockey program because we know what we are getting with the current coaching staff and it has produced poor records, dwindling attendance and fan enthusiasm, and a bad reputation among many of the junior hockey players in North America that we covet. We still have managed to get a top notch player here and there (Derek Smith, Rick Schofield, Zach Trotman, Domenic Monardo) but if this streak of pathetic records continues, it is likely that we will stop getting even the once every few years stars that we are currently managing to get to come here.
Granted, I realize that the Lakers just made a nice playoff run and stacked up well against Notre Dame, one of the top teams in the nation but the fact that we were so competitive against them is part of my point: inconsistency. The Lakers tied Minnesota-Duluth, beat Notre Dame in South Bend, and tied (with a shootout win, but that is inconsequential according to the NCAA selection committee, which sees it as a tie) Miami in Oxford. These are all teams that have spent time in the top 10 in polls the entire season and are legitimate NCAA title contenders. We also own a win and a tie against Western Michigan, a likely NCAA tournament team. Based on these results it's obvious that the Lakers even with a roster that is largely blue collar, lightly recruited players still had the capability to go toe to toe with some of the top teams in the nation. For this reason, the fact that we had 6 losses/ties (again counting the shootout results as inconsequential) against Bowling Green, Michigan State, and Michigan Tech, some of the worst squads in this region of the country is inexplicable (and 5 of the 6 the games I'm referencing happend on home ice, mind you). The only consistent this about the Lakers under Roque's tenure is the inconsistency (another example is last season when the Lakers were in a tie for 4th and ranked 18th in the country for a week in the second half of the season only to fall apart in the home stretch, finish in the bottom quarter of the standings, and bow out in the first round of the playoffs), inconsistency that has proven detrimental to the Laker's record.
Miami has been one of the top teams in the country over the last 5 years and have plenty of talent, including players who have been in the running for the Hobey Baker as part of some of the most skilled and deep rosters in the country. Yet the Redhawks still work their tail off, always have a man in the opposing goalies face to screen him, play flawless positional hockey, and are extremely disciplined and conditioned...these are things that in many games they quite frankly, don't necessarily need to do to get a win based on their high level of talent, but they do anyway. The Lakers, who pale in comparison to the talent of Miami, regularly fail in these areas and that leads to losses which contribute to the inconsistency. It would be one thing if the Lakers did all of these things, regularly played to their potential and were losing games based on the fact that they were out-talented by the other team but this is not the case, and that is the fault of the coaching staff.
I feel that now would be a great time to make a coaching change, the large freshman class is now the heart of the team going forward, and their only experience with the CCHA playoffs rewarded them a first round win and a close second round loss, so as a whole their morale about the future of Laker hockey should be higher than any class in awhile (being that every other class in the last handful of years save for the senior class last year who went to the Joe their freshman year, has had to deal with nothing but playoff failures). This is a great opportunity to build upon that by taking another step in changing the culture of LSSU hockey with bringing in a new face behind the bench...there are only two seniors leaving after next season so the majority of the Laker team will be here at least another two years (3 for many, including the goaltenders) and I feel that capitalizing on this youth by bringing in a new coach to (hopefully) build upon this year's run and improve the regular season record resulting in a consistent increase in success over the course of these underclassmen's remaining time here would be just the type of thing needed to raise the reputation and profile among potential recruits across the nation. From there we would likely to be able to bring in higher level recruits with more regularity, and could be off and running to really getting this program turned around for in the long run; as opposed to sticking with the same coach, who has proven incapable of building upon this type of success in the past (making it to the Joe in '07 and following it up with 4 poor seasons) and thus wasting an opportunity with to take advantage of a young and promising team.
I hope that you will seriously consider my recommendation and opinion that is held by many other Laker fans that I know, we all want to see the Lakers return to respectability and a coaching change is a step in that direction.
