Most people have been considering the "class" just the freshmen, which could be adequately described as "Solow, Primeau, and depth guys." Hampton, Goldstein, and Schultz all have potential to contribute but calling them fourth line to fringe bottom six guys is probably as high as expectations should go. Unfortunately (it's not really all that unfortunate) we lost a lot of our bottom six to graduation, so some of those guys are probably going to wind up on the third line, which scares me immensely unless Griffin and Jozefek manage to step up and form a competent third line again.
However when you include Pecararo, who appears to finally have made himself academically eligible, and Brandon Hawkins, who will be eligible only for the second semester, we have 2.5 strong forwards and a (formerly?) highly regarded goaltender coming in, with all six defensemen from last year's team returning. There's certainly reason to be positive, despite losing two immensely important players in John and Zach. Even if we score 10 less goals this year, if we allow 20 less from some combination of added blue line experience/new goaltending/current goaltending remembering how to stop a puck, we should be in good shape.
