Yes, Minnesota is a possibility to recruit but it isn’t going to be a place where you have a real shot getting top players out of the state on a regular basis. You can list all the positive points about Miami you want but the absolute truth is if you grow up playing hockey in Minnesota you want to play for the Gophers then UMD, UND and SCSU. Mankato has also built a very solid program that now dominates the WCHA. Staying home is a big deal to these kids. Sure a few want to get away from it and end up at the Harvard, BC and BUs of the world. Then a few will go to other B1G schools. The appeal of playing at Miami is just so far down the list again taking nothing away from the school. It does sound like a great college experience.
Kids who grow up with the NCHC will also really want to play in the NCHC. It's new, but just being in the conference is helpful for all the teams in recruiting the entire footprint. If Miami starts winning their shots at MN kids will improve even more...
Jarod Palmer scored 137 points in four years at Miami. Seems like a pretty good coax out of the state for a CCHA team. Those types will occasionally be available and interested to the right RedHawk recruiters. Probably more often as the league ages...
And none of that even matters as the idea that you can't win in the NCHC without MN players is nothing more than MN hubris. Miami is a huge draw as a university in Chicago, St. Louis and Michigan. Ontario, Pittsburgh and Western New York are all less than five hour drives from campus. Miami has just as much access to the BCHL (or CA, TX or non-Canadian foreigners and other non-traditional but growing markets) as anyone. The USHL games are all easy recruiting trips. OH and IN aren't factories, but both are turning out a surprising number of top players in a region Miami used to (and should) monopolize (Jobst at OSU and Pierson at UNH are types that are easy Miami pickings not too long ago)...
Miami doesn't need Minnesota. It needs better recruiters on staff. That's it. Top options to recruit are all around them. If they can supplement those options with a kid out of MN every few years all the better. If not, it's hardly an impact if they're doing their job well in other areas...
---
You note yourself that SCSU is the fourth choice for most MN players - yet SCSC is as talented as UMD and well ahead of UMN and UND the last few years. Why is that? It's because they had/have elite recruiters with the proper mindset - recruiters who don't give a **** that those players first choice might be UMN/UND or UW or ND and aggressively pursued, offered and sold them on SCSU anyway...
THAT is what Miami is missing. They're not down because they're not a preconceived favorite in MN or because they're lack access to numerous recruiting hotspots of their own. They have plenty of places to recruit. They're down because they're failing to identify and sell...
They're definitely getting desperate- they stole a few kids from Omaha (including Dashke who's been great and Pekar who didn't make it) and they may well have actively talked this HC kid into transferring, but time will tell if they're actually getting any better under Mannino...
They have no excuses not to turn this around, because once they can get kids on campus for visits it honestly should be like shooting fish in a barrel at that point...
As one UNH poster described Miami to me after making the trip for a game - it's 'basically Disneyland for college kids'...
The campus IS that gorgeous. The facility IS that nice. The two of Oxford IS that fun. The women ARE that beautiful, confident and intelligent. The school IS very good. If you can't recruit to Miami, you can't recruit. It's really that simple...
It may be the mid-sized school in a small town, with the funny name and the MAC sports affiliation - but all you have to do as a recruiter is share what the school is truly about and 90% of your job is done. After that it's fully funded like every other top program...
