While it is definitely true that Providence was good in the past, I see no evidence that they will be good again anytime in the future. They were mediocre or worse last season, some of their better players graduated, their recruiting class is small in numbers and weak (school didn't even bother to post it to the Friars website), and their incoming goalie recruit is highly unlikely to solve their very conspicuous goaltending problems. By blowing off pretty much all interested New England recruits in favor of Minnesota and Canadian players for several years, Deraney has totally lost any local New England pipeline for the school and created a negative image of the school amongst potential recruits there. At the same time, he has been unable to turn his prized MN and Canadian recruits into anything resembling a cohesive team (bunch of individuals skating up and down the ice with little connectivity). It was so bad two seasons ago that after that year two MN players transferred back to MN schools to play out their careers. And as a result, Providence now has a very negative connotation in MN and Canadian player circles as well as NE, a problem which is only overcome by using scholarship money to largely attract average players other schools wouldn't shell out full schollys for. New/renovated facilities are nice, but they won't get the job done alone. No, I'm definitely not seeing the positive future here under the current management.
who gets the first choice and best players out of the state.
