Re: Maine 2012 - Take 2. If This Ain't the Bottom...
Leave it to Pete Warner to actually do some real reporting re: the hockey team. Isn't the hockey program supposed to be Larry's beat?
Good for Warner for putting the problems in print...again. He has a keen sense of the obvious. The only insight offered is that Whitehead's contract has 18 months left and the estimated buyout is about $190,000. He is writing with the perspective of one season, this miserable one of '12-'13. Great, totally great, for the team that they played tough and won the Florida Tourney. No one expected it. No one's money was on it. Two wins- the first against non-ranked Minn-Duluth and the second against a very good 11th ranked (at the time) Cornell team. They were down 3-0 in the 1st and came out of nowhere to win. Thank you Marty for the shutout. Thank you Matt Morris for 2 1/2 periods of 1 goal hockey after Marty got rocked. Thanks as well to the 6 goal scorers. It is a bright spot. It doesn't change the season. It doesn't save Whitehead's job. It moved the Black Bears out of 59th and LAST place in offense in Div 1 hockey to 58th place; one ahead of Ala-Huntsville. DO NOT tell me Maine Hockey fans take any solace in that. Those that do are whacked.
Warner gives no perspective that Maine Hockey succeded from the '01-'02 season to the '06-'07 season thanks to the powerhouse that Walsh built. Whitehead inherited it and he also inherited Grant Standbrook, one of if not the the best recruiter ever in college hockey. A chimpanzee could have gotten the '02 to '07 Maine teams to the NCAA's. It is not a coincidence that the ship started to sink in the '07-'08 season, a year after Standbrook took the new role of volunteer assistant coach and was no longer on the road recruiting. Think Jimmy Howard
('02-'05) then Ben Bishop ('05-'08), both of whom were stud Div 1 goalies and left Maine early to go AHL/NHL. Standbrook recruits. Think about the goalie situation since then. Have a migraine yet?
Fact: Maine Hockey is now financially break even at best for this season. Season ticket sales have fallen off the table. It may still have made money up til two years ago, but no longer. UMaine suffers badly without the Hockey team ringing the cash register.
Fact: Maine Hockey still has full scholarship money. It has not been cut, even in horrible economic times.
Fact: At 4-9-2, Maine has little hope of recruiting great kids from anywhere...until something fundamentally changes. The lustre and elite stature are g-o-n-e gone.
Example: Gee, why did a freshman star goalie like Jon Gillies from South Portland end up at Providence College? The kid has played great so far this season, lifting a perennially mediocre team to 4th place currently in Hockey East.
Conclusion: Whitehead has to go. ASAP. He's not getting the job done and has no hope of turning it around. He's a talent scout for a funeral parlor.
The momentum downward is substantial and has to be stopped. Give someone else a chance. We did in 1984. The guy's name was Walsh. One can only imagine what he's saying as he watches this...you know he's watching this.
