Re: Official 2009-2010 Miami season thread part II: Unfinished Business
Hard to say from what I saw since it was so early. Not taking anything away from UAH but Notre Dame played pretty poorly in my estimation. They turned the puck over a lot in the loss, and turnovers and a stupid penalty led directly to 2 of the 3 UAH goals. But then you can say that about a lot of goals I guess. They certainly aren't the most talented team, but I'm buying into Cole as a coach and the team is buying into the system that Cole put into place. They appeared to be really disciplined and positionally sound when I saw them, which means they can take advantage of mistakes, and any lackluster play on the part of their opponent. Teams that are in the right place a lot tend to steal a few wins. One of the things that struck me was I couldn't tell who was on the ice for UAH without seeing numbers. By that I mean it seemed like everyone on the team knew how to get to spots and be properly spaced and they didn't turn the puck over as a result. Notre Dame had very few odd-man breaks in either game.
GFM can correct this if I'm wrong, but I think they consistently get outshot by their opponents. I believe ND threw 50+ shots on them in the ND win and 40+ on them in the loss and outshot them in all 6 periods, mostly by wide margins. That lulls you into a false sense of security a lot of the time. But it can also be the key to winning. They'll give up the shots, you just have to make them good ones.
Yeah, we get a lot of SOGA, but they're usually low-percentage shots. I just re-watched the CHA championship game, and most of the chances were from outside. Now, you might argue that this was a Niagara strategy, but I'd disagree---they like to slash to the net with their speed. And, well, they did get there, but when they did, Talbie was up to the challenge.
I'll agree with IHF that UAH capitalized on Notre Dame's penalties. [I still don't know how that second consecutive penalty on Thang was called. Jeff Jackson was trying not to complain about it post-game, but then I nodded my head at him when the subject came up. I think he felt better about doing it knowing that a UAH guy was agreeing with him.[1]]
IHF is also right about Cole instilling discipline in his players. It's a breath of fresh air after the Doug Ross era, when UAH was routinely in the top ten [and often top five] of PIM/G in D-I.
That said, our talent pool gets better with each incoming class. Cole, Luongo, and McCabe are really doing yeoman's work in recruiting kids to Huntsville, which has been hard with a shaky league and is now probably harder with no league at all. We're a unique situation, though, and that's attractive to some kids. [As are year-round golf and Southern women. Ahem.]
GFM
[1] I recap for USCHO, including that weekend. I typically try to take all my UAH gear off [2] before I go interview anyone.
[2] Press boxes are for professional writers. I'm a professional rocket scientist.
In Huntsville, our refs are usually CCHA refs flown in from the Midwest, while the linesmen are local guys. I know the refs for the CHA tournament final were CCHA guys. I don't know how the other member schools did it ... could be that BSU gets WCHA refs and Niagara gets ECAC guys. [Figure that RMU gets CCHA guys given proximity.]
.